What is horsepower and torque and how do they relate to a car being fast or a truck having a towing capacity?
In: Engineering
Let’s draw an analogy.
If Torque and horsepower were people, Torque would be Arnold Schwarzenegger while HP would be Usain Bolt.
Now both of them are tasked with carrying a 100 bricks across a bridge.
Now Arnold, given his sheer power, can carry 20 bricks at a time, making 5 trips in total, which take him 50 mins in total, or 10 min per trip.
Now Bolt, though not as strong as Arnold, can run like a cheetah. So though he only carries 5 bricks at a time, he only takes 2.5 mins per trip, doing the task in 50 mins.
So, horse power is the amount of work done in a given time, measured in HP or Kilowatts.
In order to do the same amount of task, i.e. achieve same amount of horsepower, you can either increase your Tourqe (strength/force) or revolutions per minute (RPM).
HP is a function of Torque and revolutions.
When judging a car, compare the HP, the work it gets done, whether by brute force (torque) or RPM, not just torque.
No point having Mark Henry in your team if he can’t see when Ray Mysterio kicks his ass because he’s too heavy.
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