eli5 What’s happening when an engine stalls from low RPM?
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“Lugging it”. Internal combustion engines only work in motion. You can’t just halt the engine half-way between engine strokes and then start it up again. (Without invoking the starter.) The combustion only happens at certain points of a revolution. When you let the RPM fall too low and the engine dies, it lost too much momentum to keep the crankshaft spinning and the pistons moving. It takes energy on the compression stroke where it squeezes the fuel and air. If the energy of the momentum of the engine is less than the energy needed to compress the gasses, rotation stops, and the engine dies / stalls.
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