Free MIT Engineering Text For Download 207
An anonymous reader writes " The (sci-tech) Library Question is reporting, "The third edition of A Heat Transfer Textbook, written by John H Lienhard V (MIT) and John H Lienhard IV (U Houston), has been made available on the web. The book is an introduction to heat transfer, geared towards engineering students. It may be downloaded free of charge. The authors explain:
We are placing a mechanical engineering textbook into an electronic format for worldwide, no-charge distribution. The aim of this effort is to explore the possibilities of placing textbooks online -- effectively giving them away. Two potential benefits should accrue from doing this. First, in electronic format, textbooks can be continually corrected and updated, without the delays inherent in printed books (second and later editions are typically published on a five-year cycle). Second, free textbooks hold the potential for fundamentally altering the economics of higher education, particularly in those environments where money is scarce."
posting textbooks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:posting textbooks (Score:5, Informative)
He has submitted a related story [slashdot.org] on Slashdot before.
Re:posting textbooks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:posting textbooks (Score:3, Insightful)
Writing a textbook is not an easy feat, and posting them online for free download doesn't give the author any sort of compensation for their work other than the satisfaction of making students happy.
Also, I find it unlikely that this will really catch on, simply because most of the professors I've dealt with simply would not consider a textbook like this, or wouldn't even be aware of it. Th
Re:posting textbooks (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as other professors adopting the books, I could see it happening. I've had quite a few professors that seemingly complained about the price of textbooks more than the students did. I've even had a handful that put a textbook on the syllabus to keep the state happy but then told us not to waste our money on the textbook on the first day of class and instead mak
Re:posting textbooks (Score:2)
You'd think for the price more people would be profiting than the publisher; obviously this is a better idea. At least the author could make some money off of PayPal-whoring or banner ads or something.
Re:posting textbooks (Score:2)
Of course, it could also be asked why should the authors participate in this process if they don't make any profits?
Generally, academic writers don't make any profit. Their reward is the recognition of being published by a big-name scientific publishing house. The only one who makes a monetary profit is the publisher.
JP
Re:posting textbooks (Score:2, Interesting)
I've written some open-source physics textbooks [lightandmatter.com] that have been adopted at eighteen schools. Not trying to blow my own horn -- I just wanted to provide a counterexample.
Re:posting textbooks (Score:2, Informative)
Re:posting textbooks (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble, of course, is that with (especially graduate) textbooks, there are very few people who'd possibly buy it, making publishing them an expensive task.
By the way, if you're intrested in mathematical analysis but you aren't prepared to spend an entire years budget on those nice yellow Springer books, check out Modern analysis online [kcl.ac.uk] for not so much books as lecture notes; still a good source.
As a side note: The papers on "Modern Analysis Online" are still copyrighted by their respective authors. I'm sure you can download them, print them, but certainly not publish them. The website has all the boring details.
Re:posting textbooks (Score:2)
if you're intrested in mathematical analysis but you aren't prepared to spend an entire years budget on those nice yellow Springer books
...then you definitely owe it to yourself to check out Dover books [doverpublications.com].
They buy up and republish as paperbacks some classic old textbooks such as
for bargain prices, typically about US$10.
The on
Re:posting textbooks (Score:3, Informative)
It's just a matter of time before public educational institutions at the K-12 and university level (in addition to many private educational institutions)procure all or most of their curriculum materials this way.
American public educational institutions spend several billions of tax dollars per year for text
Re:posting textbooks (Score:2)
A monopoly only really works when the monopolist is much larger than the consumer. But if the consumer is the University of California (or it's students) it seems logical that the monopoly (or in the case of the publishing industry, oligopoly) wouldn't have power. But they do.
The UC could just hire its own authors and save a lot of money, and even give away the material for free. It seems dumb to keep buying from publishers.
Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2)
It cost almost $600 last time I bought books, anything is still something,
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize that you'd just be transfering the cost, right? "Free" means "included in your tuition", which means rather than paying $600 for your books at a book store, you're paying $600 more in tuition and get your books for free. Sure, some amortization is possible, but is it really fair for a student whose major typically requires $200 in books to subsidize a major that requires $600 in book
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:4, Interesting)
in my courses (physics) the point of lectures is to obtain a set of notes good enough to work completely on their own in most cases. questions and answers are also provided by lecturers.
without wanting to sound like a flame or anything, is it possible that in the US lecturers just can't be bothered or aren't given the resources to teach their pupils properly and so fall back on textbooks which the money-grabbing publishers are happy to exploit (I've heard tales of unnecessary book-CD bundles etc. all just to inflate prices).
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Philip Greenspun [greenspun.com], writing about his book Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing [greenspun.com]
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2)
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2)
So, if that's the point of the lecture, it would work just as well if your buddy took the notes and gave them to you, right? How about if your buddy bound the notes for you? How about if somebody else did this for you and called it a "book"?
I'm sure lots of people had different educational experiences than mine. I purposefully went to college with relatively small classe
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2)
possible for some courses but not others where we are learning stuff that won't be published in a good text book until next year.
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2)
That's surprising. I can't think of many courses I took where there was remotely enough information given in class to learn the material thoroughly. Especially not physics. There was simply too much information for a 1 hour class period. Class was basically where you went to understand the trickier aspects of the text or to learn what the professor thought was important.
I'd have to assume that your
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2)
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2)
understanding copyright law is your friend - you are allowed to copy a certain amounts of textbook for private study etc.
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2, Informative)
I earn 60.000 UKP a year (about 105.000 USD). Way over th
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2)
How is that for "astronomically higher"?
Don't forget the 17% VAT (compare with 4-8% sales tax). States that have higher income tax have lower sales tax (on average), so the US version has already been figured into your calculations.
Re:Great idea, let's expand it. (Score:2)
Good Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Another thing, will schools then start supplying laptops or tablet PC's to view these text books on while in class?
Re:Good Idea (Score:2, Informative)
Good for Science books, maybe not for History. (Score:3, Funny)
- Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the beginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party, since the beginning of history, the war has continued without a break, always the same war.
Take one part secure eBook format, one part trusted computing, and one part extensible markup. Mix vigorously and serve with a side of Freedom fries.Assuming some honesty... (Score:5, Interesting)
With some engineering and science -related courses suffering from low levels of interest, a wider availability of resources could (as the article suggests) draw out those who aren't applying for financial reasons, whilst giving others a taste of subjects and their potential uses in picking a career path and making a difference. After all, most people have felt they've had a good idea or two at some time or other... many have been discouraged only by the lack of readily available background knowledge.
Yay for more open learning!
Well I have no clue what its about.. (Score:2)
On a side note, the Economist recently ran an article asking if Public Libraries are now out dated. If so then it is says a lot about society and not much of that is bad. Making texts of books like this available is a start, making the fact that they are available is the real task. Perhaps the government can use some of that money wasted on pork barrel projects to provide a public "Internet
Re:Well I have no clue what its about.. (Score:2)
beneficial in more ways than one (Score:2, Insightful)
It would also eliminate the need to carry around excessively heavy textbooks which often lead to back pain and other detrimental health issues.
Schools and other edu
Re:beneficial in more ways than one (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:beneficial in more ways than one (Score:2)
http://radio.weblogs.com/0104634/2003/07/31.html#a 2071 [weblogs.com]
Re:beneficial in more ways than one (Score:3, Funny)
Unless one of your courses requires you to carry around the entire Encyclopedia Britainnica, you really need to start working out.
Re:beneficial in more ways than one (Score:2)
If it's a public school, maybe they are trying to make up for the lack of spending on physical education.
Considering that each textbook weighs an average of 3-4 lbs that's 18-24 lbs just on textbooks alone...according to this article no student should carry more than 15 lbs so it's affecting a significant number of students.
When I used to hike a lot, my pack was around 50 lbs. Multi-day hikes either teach you how to do
When can we start (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, one of the big issues in textbook publication is that the information included sometimes can be determined by what state publishes the text - this is especially true in history and biology, both of which are full of political dynamite.
Maybe eventually this will lead to a freer exchange of information.
Re:When can we start (Score:3, Informative)
(Keeping it short cuz I posted about it in a new thread).
Re:When can we start (Score:2)
We have taken this approach with possibly the earliest (to my knowledge) online textbook [utah.edu] available. This site is an online textbook of retinal biology and anatomy compiled by a number of folks. Please forgive the old-school design (early 90's web look, feel and code but that was when it went online) as I am redesigning it in my not so spare time and hope to start wrapping in genetics, molecular bio
Well... (Score:2)
Here are some more free books (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Here are some more free books (Score:2, Informative)
Noble Effort (Score:3, Insightful)
Writing a textbook is no small endeavor, professors often spend months upon months writing and revising a single text. While the Open Source community can survive off the valiant efforts of thousands of coders worldwide, the number of individuals in higher academia qualified to write textbooks is much more limited.
I just can't envision a scenario where this kind of approach is sustainable in a long-term or wide-reaching context. Thoughts?
-- Frag00
Re:Noble Effort (Score:2)
What would be nice though is an oversite body. Each college pays a small amount $100,000 per school?? For unlimited access and all access is granted inside the college system. The The colleges can raise that money by making each student pay $5 or so.
Or better yet have each College collect $5-$10 from each student and that money goes to the oversite board, that makes sur
Re:Noble Effort (Score:3, Informative)
According to this Professor: [sa2.info]"A typical [College] textbook earns the author less than $3,000 over a five-year or longer period." That's not a lot of money we're talking about. It could be funded in a number of different ways. We could have featured sponsors, student micropaiments, and paypal donations.
While the Open Source community can survive off the valiant efforts of thousands of c
Re:Noble Effort (Score:2)
Yes, but we don't need that many books in the first place. If the authors adopt the open source model and allow others to contribute to or take what they need from their work, then the same book won't have to be rewritten from scratch by a thousand different authors.
Yeah, just like open source software removes the necessity of many teams writing the same type of software over and over again.
Seriously, different authors often try different pedagogical approaches to writing books. Or maybe they liked som
Re:Noble Effort (Score:3, Insightful)
The editors and
Re:Noble Effort (Score:3, Interesting)
The publishers, on the other hand do not provide the typical services that justify their share of the profit; promotion of the books is non-existant. When distribution is all they are left with, where do they add value?
My biggest gripes with the hard-copy texts is that (a) they cost so much you have an incentive to sell them at the end of the class, and (b) they are so darn heavy that every time you move yo
Re:Noble Effort (Score:2)
It will decrease the quality, yes, but it will also increase the quantity of books available to any one person and so the best of the best ebooks will easily spread like wild fire.
Incentive (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's something to ponder. Why does somebody write a textbook? Is it because they enjoy the subject matter, enjoy writing, and want to write an engaging, accurate book? Or is it because one can charge large sums for such a textbook? Unfortunately it's often the latter.
While the idea of an epic "Commercial vs. Open" textbook rivalry akin to that seen in software is romantic, writing a textbook tends to be somewhat less pleasant, less rewarding, more expensive, and more exacting than writing software. I'd hate to think the foremost experts in fields may be discouraged from writing one day because they can't compete with free, mediocre sources.
Re:Incentive (Score:4, Insightful)
Well its certainly not for the money. The typical textbook brings in negligable sums at best. Typically about 2000 GBP as far as I can tell. The general reason is because you require a book for your students that doesn't exist. And if you have the course notes you've written to hand then its more or less there as a by-product. A bit of polishing and you are away.
Sorry, I know this sounds a little disappointing, its done for reasons of dull expediency and neither fame nor fortune.
For graduate level texts/"professional" publications the story is of course rather different, and the reasons for doing it are pretty much the same as writing journal papers; (i) "publish or perish"; (ii) mindshare within your field; (iii) again, the damn book you wish was written for your students (this time grads) doesn't yet exist. Writing a whole book is a little inefficient insofar as its only one line on the CV and indeed, if we look back before the days of "publish or perish" you will note that practically everyone had written a book at some point in their careers. However, this seems to be a declining trend, at least within the sciences where time is perhaps better spent on publishing normal papers or writing grant applications.
if you cant write, you cant teach (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Incentive (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Incentive (Score:2)
Re:Incentive (Score:2)
But remember that investing a year of your life to write a book for free, even if you enjoy writing it, won't put food on the table. Unfortunately scientists can't live from fame alone. I would love to be able to spend my time any way I lik
Re:Incentive (Score:2)
Re:Incentive (Score:3, Interesting)
Some univer
Rubbish (Score:2)
The vast majority of textbooks don't make a significant amount of money. Certainly not enough to justify writing them for that purpose alone.
Quality (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Quality (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to wonder if quality will suffer as a result.
I would expect free textbooks to improve the quality of both free and non-free ones.
First, assuming that a qualified author writes a free textbook, there should be a fairly high base quality because the author's reputation among his peers is at stake. Another author of a non-free textbook would then have to write a better book than the free one if he expects to charge for it.
Second, because the free electronic books are subject to frequent revision, ot
Re:Quality (Score:2)
It's not that simple. Time spent writing textbooks is time not spent doing teaching or research. Less teaching means that the university needs to hire someone else; less research means less research grants, which will cause problems at institutions which get a large fraction of their income by deducting "overhead costs" from their professors' research grants.
Re:Quality (Score:3, Interesting)
A well regarded and published professor is money in the bank for a university.
A professor who "pens" a text that becomes one of _the_ texts in his field
can elevate his university's stature tremendously. Imagine if we cut out the
middleman. A university handles the electronic pulishing duties.
In your case the text becomes "The cperciva Text." It can be updated
indefinitely. Continuous peer review. Continuous contributions
fr
Re:Quality (Score:2, Insightful)
Students have zero influence over textbook selection. Teachers pick textbooks based on their own criteria. That's what's goofy about the textbook market: the people who pay for the books aren't the ones who pick them.
Re:Quality (Score:2)
How I wish that you were correct. Unfortunately, many institutions are plagued by powerful (and short-sighted) students' unions.
More Free eBooks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More Free eBooks (Score:2)
Education is not only a textbook... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me clarify that last statement - I think that a good textbook is an essential element of a good education on a particular subject, but I do not think that it is the only element required. A well-rounded education should also include hands-on lab time (costs money) and people you can ask to help you and to explain what you are having problems understanding (costs money).
Now, if this book is aimed at people for whom money is a problem, isn't it naive to think that they have access to a computer (and enough time on that computer to read and understand the text)?
This book could quite possibly replace existing texts and lower the cost of an education, but I doubt that it would become the entire education. However, I don't think that you can have too many alternative texts on a subject, especially when they are free.
Wikibooks (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not involved in running Wikibooks, I just use it and contribute to it, and I think it's a great project worth spreading the word about; plus, the more people contribute to it, the better it is.
Re:Wikibooks (Score:2)
Sorry but I have to say that at the current state, Wikibooks still sucks. Most part is NOT suitable for teaching in the class. Just take a look at any lessons: science, engineering, languages, etc. Many authors actually don't know what it takes to write a textbook. Most of the contents are just comparable to student notes stiched out altogether.
Not only that, how many times spammers and other contributors overwrite, nitpick, or even bend the course of the lesson altogether without giving any reasons whats
Re:Wikibooks (Score:2)
Re:Wikibooks (Score:2)
Well, if we draw some analogy to coding, my main complaint is like this: You are building a code in a public CVS where you allow everyone to commit stuff, not just to read from it. In an early stage, it's difficult for everyone to know where the book is heading -- but suddenly some wiseass jumped in pretending to know it and pour some changes all over the board. Of course you can reverse the changes, but as the original author, wouldn't you be frustrated on this? Wikibooks right now is exactly like this.
T
errors in textbooks, PC (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the idea of putting this kind of information online, if there is a way that this can be done without too much lost inertia from the fact that you are just giving away your hard work for nothing (i.e. also sell the book in hard-copy), have a donation place for it, or somehow organize funding in some other way. Also, you don't necessarily go through a big publisher to do it this way - you can have more freedom to simply produce an accurate textbook, without having some committee breathing down your neck or having your work thrown in haphazardly with ten other authors' work.
And there may be more control over the authorship, and the way the whole thing is put together.
But generally speaking, for instance, O'Reilly books are not that particularly expensive, and I just kind of feel better contributing some type of financial money to the author, and having a hard-copy book has its benefits as well, in case you feel like not being tied down to the computer or laptop screen. I like buying books, but I also like using electronic formats sometimes (it's easier and faster to take notes), it's especially cool when you are studying a programming language and you can see examples in the book and try out your own while you are physically sitting at your computer.
Electronic formats are good, and hard-copies are good too. What really needs to happen is that the cost of the textbooks, the hardcopy textbooks, need to come down by at least 50%. Again, this can be blamed on the "big publishing companies" - many of the policies and procedures that are commonplace at these types of embedded publishers drive the costs of textbooks up, and increase the number of errors in those textbooks at the same time. Paying some 30 dollars for a very excellent O'Reilly book, for instance, is really no big deal, considering how long it's going to take to read it and work through it, and hopefully the authors are getting some kind of reward in there too. Having an electronic format available for free, especially in the situation where one has purchased the hardcopy, is, I think, a really good idea; especially if that electronic format can have an errata somewhere or something.
To sum up, I think that the price of textbooks needs to come down, and the errors need to be lesser in number as well. These two things appear to be tied in together, to some extent. Furthermore, there should be a means to reward the authors for their work; I don't think that giving away books for free is really going to encourage people to write quality material; there needs to be some sort of way to integrate the hard copy and the electronic copy in a way that increases the benefits to the reader and still rewards the author and encourages more people to write quality material.
I think that this is going to turn out to not be quite as easy as it sounds.
How About a Review? (Score:2, Insightful)
The Engines of Our Ingenuity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Engines of Our Ingenuity (Score:2)
The Academic System (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Academic System (Score:2)
I'm not sure what field you are in, but in almost all scientific fields at my major Midwest research institution, textbooks do not count towards promotion and tenure. In order of importance: (1) grants (how much money have you brought in); (2) publications in peer-reviewed journals; (3) number of PhD students; (4) service (what committees
good idea ? (Score:2, Insightful)
xpdf (Score:2)
Can't argue with free (or can you?!) (Score:2)
Has anyone used this text book before? It is all very well giving away books for free, but if they aren't that good anyway, you still have to buy another one. When I have a spare moment I will try to look through the book more carefully, but from a cursory glance, it looks good so far.
More info on MIT's Intermediate Heat XFer Course (Score:2, Informative)
Even better... (Score:3, Interesting)
Should be easy to bust this Racket (Score:2)
1. Write Text Book (introduced with typo errors).
2. Get Professor to force students to buy.
3. Write new Text Book (same as old, but with some typos fixed, and some new ones introduced.
4. Next semester, Get Professor to force students to buy newer improved version.
5. Go back to step 3.
------
If I were in college today, I would be outraged if I were required to buy a single text book.
Everything is on the net.
That is why I wrote two free web books (Score:3, Interesting)
I would occasionally get emails from people teaching classes to students who no-way could afford to buy my books (usually in 3rd world countries). These teachers would ask for permission to copy a few chapters for class distribution - something that I did not have the right to do.
My solution to this problem was to write 2 free web books using a Creative Commons license (I was the featured commoner about a year ago).
I still write books for publication, but to be honest, writing free books under a CC license is way more satisfying.
-Mark
Good start, but we need GPL multimedia textbooks (Score:4, Interesting)
It was our idea that we should start with an introductory physics text, say, basic mechanics. The ultimate product would be an .iso disk image which contains not only a textbook, but recordings of key lectures, some highly compressed video and simulations of certain experiments, perhaps rendered in a GPL 3D graphics engine (where physical principles would be programmed in, and students could manipulate the setup and observe realistic changes in the results).
This would be a large and publicised project, and one that could/should attract enough NSF funding to cover its modest costs. (I've seen the NSF give money to much more frivolous ideas!) The initial text might be a "donation" from a cooperating professor, and the audio/video lecture fragments would also be solicited recorded in the classrooms of truly excellent faculty. (Nobody I talked to about this said he/she would refuse.) The various programs and simulations that need to be written would come from contracted, qualified and paid programmers and graduate students. (And perhaps volunteers.) All their code would be GPL.
Once the project gets going, a working group, organized much like an editorial board, would solicit and review new submissions and alterations. There can be arbitrarily many exercise problems, as well as detailed explanations of their solutions.
These would fully take advantage of the digital format. One weakness of paper textbooks is that by their nature, they have space for only a few fully-solved and explained sample exercises. This would not be a limitation of an electronic text. In fact, how to solve an exercise could be explained in several different ways by different instructors, maximizing the chance the student would "get it". I imagine an interface where next to each step, there is a small "how does this follow?" button. If pressed, it opens a small window describing the motivation of a certain transition.
Many of these details and elaborations could be contributed by users of the textbook. Like any major software project, there would be a moderated online forum to discuss issues related to the textbook. Ultimate decisions about how the text should be updated (the regular "distributions" of the GPL material) would be made by the editorial board. In academia many professors participate in editing journals pro bono, and we could expect something similar here. Feedback on the various aspects of the text would be solicited directly from students and instructors, and the editorial board would post "requests for updates" with specific issues that need to be addressed to make the project a better learning tool.
Well, we thought about many more details of implementation, but they are boring and you guys might have better ideas anyway. The point of the whole project would be primarily to have a supplement to introductory college-level classes, but the uses go far beyond that. The textbook would be designed to be self-learner friendly, something a motivated high-school student could easily work through. It could be duplicated cheaply and en masse (at first it would be a set of CD-ROMS, eventually transitioning to DVD-ROMS). In places where poverty, georgaphy and cultural factors limit access to higher education (which includes parts of the USA), people will still have simple computers and can cover the $2 for a burned DVD-ROM.
Of course, the idea would be to get one "hit" textbook and then reuse the software and other infrastructure to make more. Not only would this textbook require sequels, but also a demand for a calculus textbook in the same format. These are ideal fields for getting the project rolling, because introductory math, physics and chemistry textbooks don't get obsolete very quickly. How this project would be paid for re
Re:Good start, but we need GPL multimedia textbook (Score:2)
Please email me. (Your /. account has no visible contact info).
-- MG
Re:Good start, but we need GPL multimedia textbook (Score:5, Interesting)
The software we developed (I was the programmer on the project) was used for several classes on campus at Utah State University [usu.edu], where the project was based from, under the direction of Dr. R. Kent Wood (he has since retired). Our primary emphasis was more toward K-12 learning, but it proved to be quite popular with several computer-based learning groups including C.A.L.I.C.O [calico.org], a group of individuals working on acquiring forign language skills through computer-based learning.
There are several issues that need to be dealt with in regards to multimedia development. Some of them have been solved compared to what I was dealing with in the past, but some still are huge problems:
Re:Good start, but we need GPL multimedia textbook (Score:2)
It really is a shame that the licensing issues basically left this thing impossible to resurrect. The next time grant-committe
Free? You're Not Free To Decimate Industry (Score:2)
Prediction: For using their books, textbook publishers will soon get universities to sign comprehensive noncompete agreements, whereby their professors can't go and do "Communist" things like publish their own books
Shameless Plug (Score:2)
Free Biomedical Library (Score:2, Interesting)
Some other free textbooks available (Score:2)
http://samizdat.mines.edu/
To see several on-line works (mostly geophysics stuff) that have been available for a number of years.
Here's how to make online books pay (Score:2)
The course fee approach would be very efficient
Key-word ads in textbooks? (Score:2)
So, how long before we start seeing Ebay banner ads in our free e-textbooks?
The other extreme at the University of Texas (Score:2, Interesting)
Ultimate Teaching Freedom (Score:2)
would be if video clips of professors at boards explaining concepts were made freely available.
In multiple languages.
Yes, students would still miss out on mutual interaction, but this would be a great way to increase access to higher education.
And not just engineering, despite its importance. But mathematics, literature, philosophy, political science, psychology, 2nd languages, should be course offerings, too.
It could be the key to renewable power. (Score:3, Offtopic)
CAES systems use air compressed using energy from off peak generation to provide generation capacity during peak hours:
http://www.pbworld.com/pbenergy/caes.htm
Already implemented in Germany and Alabama.
The Solar II power tower system in California stores concentrated heat from the sun in molten salt in order to generate power at night and during cloudy periods.
http://rhlx01.rz.fht-esslingen.de/pr
Re:Is there a solutions manual? (Score:2)