I have worked on equipment most of my life and still don’t understand.
nearly all energy put into an ice engine that isn’t lost as heat goes to spinning a shaft. please explain to me how i can tell the difference between torque and horse power?
In: Physics
My understanding is torque is the pulling force and horsepower is more about maintenance.
So a truck trying to pull a trailer needs torque. That puts most of the energy starting movement for something that is heavy and not already moving. Once it starts moving, torque is “wasted”. Thinking about it this way helps you understand torque isn’t about how fast the engine spins but about how hard it will push to MAKE itself spin. Attach a heavy weight to a high torque motor and it’ll start moving easily, but slowly.
A race car trying to go very fast is using horsepower. That’s not a very strong force, it’s best used to make something that’s already moving keep moving at that speed. Horsepower is about letting the engine spin very fast, but it can’t push hard to MAKE itself spin fast. If you attach a weight to a high horsepower motor, you’ll probably have to give it a push to get it started. Then you’ll watch it slowly accelerate to a high RPM.
That’s why cars have gearboxes. The low gears are about getting the heavy car moving and pulling loads: they focus on torque. Higher gears are about maintaining speed once the car reaches it: they focus on horsepower.
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