How is gas converted into electricity in a car?
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Inside the engine compartment of your car is a device called an [alternator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternator_(automotive)). This is connected to the main engine by a belt. The alternator converts rotational energy into electricity in the same way that an electrical generator does. It takes this electricity and charges your battery. The rest of your car’s electronics runs off this.
Gasoline burns and moves engine piston. Up and down piston motion is turned in to rotation by crankshaft. Rotation motion spins shaft that drives a belt attached to alternator. The alternator spins a magnet around a copper coil. This excitation of the magnetic field creates electron flow. Or electricity.
Man that was really bad and probably not eli5 but I’m tired. Sorry. Someone will definitely come along and do better.
The engine burns the gas which causes the engine to spin. That spinning motion is used to drive several things, one of which is the alternator.
An alternator is a metal case that contains a bunch of copper windings and a spinning axle that carries some magnets. If you move a magnet with a coil of wire or move the coil of wire over the magnet, you generate an electrical current. In a car, this is used to run your electrical accessories and charge your battery.
Ok so, let’s say you wrap a piece of wire into a coil/spring. Now, put a magnet inside that coil. At rest, the magnet is producing a magnetic field, but otherwise doing nothing. But if you move the magnet, give it some kind of velocity, some kinetic energy, then the magnetic field it produces will begin to generate electricity in that wire coil surrounding the magnet as it continues to move. It stops generating power the moment the magnet stops moving. If you’ve ever seen a hand-crank radio or flashlight, that’s how those are devices powered without any batteries or external charge. The crank moves a magnet that’s surrounded by wire.
This process we’re doing is converting mechanical/kinetic energy into electrical energy. A pulley/belt connected to the car’s engine spins a rotor extremely fast. That rotor rapidly spins a magnet that’s surrounded by wiring, which is how we go from chemical energy (gasoline) to kinetic energy (pistons in the engine moving, pulleys, belts, gears, and rotors spinning) to electric energy (spinning magnetic field generates charge).
Every car has an alternator. The same force that spins your wheels is used to spin what is essentially a small generator. All generators uses a physical property of electromagnetism. Essentially when a magnet passes through an electromagnetic field it will induce an electrical current. So we place a dense coil of wires and spin a magnet inside those wires. The spinning magnets will induce a current in those wires which will then feed the battery.
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