A television advertisement and a website present an interesting question: can rail company CSX "really" move a ton of freight 468 miles on a gallon of fuel, or is the claim preposterous? Let us examine the claim, first by understanding what is meant, looking at their data, and then converting units to examine the claim quantitatively.

An athlete sitting on a bicycle seat can produce about 100 watts of useful power on a long-term basis. After 10 hours, the athlete produces 1000 watt-hours, or one kilowatt-hour (kWh). While some people balk at the notion of having to pay (say) 8.5 cents rather than their present 8 cents for that kilowatt-hour, what would they have to pay the…

Demonstrates, using specific problems, how various energy units can be converted to joules and power units to watts. Conversion tables are provided for power, energy, generation values, thermal insulation, consumption values, sunlight, with tables also on metric prefixes and time conversions. (SK)