I recently got into cars.
In: Engineering
(very) ELI5 is basically that a small gear spinning fast will turn big gear slower (but with more usable force). You’re exchanging more speed to more power. This can be controlled via number of teeth on the gear.
You can take two strings, and tie a weight to each of them; small one to one string, and heavier one to another. Now, spinning the string in your hand as fast as you can, you’re using same amount of energy to spin both, but smaller one will spin much faster than heavy one. The small one will have more speed, but the large one will have more force. So the energy you’re spending is converted differently.
That principle is used in transmission to turn fast-rotating engine crankshaft into slower, but more powerful movement of the wheels.
Gear ratios are adjustment/balancing of the whole works – at which ratio do we convert speed to power?
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