37 ms·
Internal Combustion Engine
- mgarfias 5y agook, and?
- noveltyaccount 5y agoThis is incredible. I remember the Gears example from the same site, but now with 3D renderings. Great work.
- phpdave11 5y agoThis was really educational! I love the design of the webpage, and I especially like how you can rotate the 3d diagrams and see each component from every angle.
- Syonyk 5y agoI had no idea until I read your comment that you could click and drag the engine models! Insane!
- sillysaurusx 5y agoDitto. Thanks.
- jiofih 5y agoThe text immediately before the first image says “You can drag it around to see it from other angles”. Our attention spans are deteriorating quickly…
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- randlet 5y agoIf anyone is looking for a hands on educational model, my 6 year old and I put together a model V8 engine [1] (made by Haynes of technical manual fame I think) that does a pretty reasonable job of capturing the essence of the main parts of an internal combustion engine. It kept him (and me) thoroughly engrossed for a few hours. [1] https://www.themotorbookstore.com/build-your-own-v8-engine-model.html https://www.themotorbookstore.com/build-your-own-v8-engine-m...
- engineer_22 5y agoWhat a great website, awesome animations, and intuitive interactives
- endisneigh 5y agoHow were these animations made? They’re excellent!
- fuzzybear3965 5y agoHe posted a bit of information on his Twitter: https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski/status/1387827101294686210?s=19 https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski/status/1387827101294686210...
- bob1029 5y agoview-source:https://ciechanow.ski/js/ice.js I find this to be a very impressive implementation.
- wyuenho 5y agoI wonder if it's completely written by hand from scratch or done with something like emscripten.
- fuzzybear3965 5y agoHe said on Twitter that he hand-wrote the animation code.
- louwrentius 5y agoThis is very nicely done, I love it.
- kingsuper20 5y agoIt's a lot scarier when you see things going under load at speed. Lots of wiggling, twisty magic, waves. Smokey Yunick (blessed be his name) used to make see-through timing covers, oil pans, valve covers + strobe light + some sort of oscilloscope setup to watch the craziness. I think I remember seeing the results for small block Chevrolet timing gears on sprint car engines as the teeth wiggled more and more with rpm. Cam went backwards and forwards. Ooof.
- bob1029 5y agoReciprocating machines are fairly remarkable when you consider all of the components involved, forces, etc. Even more so when you think about how long a typical car engine lasts. These incredible forces are why rotary and turbine engines are substantially more reliable. Some gas turbines have only 1 moving part, and in some applications this moving part experiences zero wear due to magnetic/aerodynamic/active bearings.
- bitexploder 5y ago[*] more reliable in theory. Mazda RX8 and rotary engines are famous for being a bit maintenance heavy and unreliable. The amount of engineering and brain power that has gone into making common ICE engines in cars in wide deployment reliable is staggering.
- bob1029 5y agoAgreed on automotive rotary. It's not in the same spirit as the gas turbine and others.
- Dork1234 5y agoI've own an RX8 maintenance came down to adding oil every few fill ups, and changing spark plugs every 10k miles. If you treat the engine correctly, the will easily get to 100k miles, if you drive the engine incorrectly (run at low RPM), or run low on oil things won't last long. The car is a sports car and won't get you worry free 200,000 miles like Accord or Camry. Even the S2000 had similar oil usage. Talking to the dealers I took the car too, many of the issues with related to people who didn't warm engine up, or baby the engine below 3,000 rpms causing carbon build up.
- incomplete 5y agoas someone who as a hobby occasionally builds engines (for the 24 hours of lemons), i was really impressed at how incredibly accurate and detailed this whole page is. i'm down w/TDC...
- mgarfias 5y agoI wasn't. But then I've literally been working on engines since i was a little kid.
- addison-lee 5y agoQuality contribution!
- mgarfias 5y agoso was your mom
- userbinator 5y agoThose who are curious about the oval piston skirts may find this interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397926
- specialp 5y agoI just built an engine for my car. One thing I gained an appreciation for was how CHEAP cars and engines are. There's probably nothing else with as precise machining that is as inexpensive. Engine cylinders are honed to accuracies that are less than 1 thousandth of an inch. Crank journals as well and rod journals. This is all precise machine work with metal. I use inches here because in machine work thousandths of inches is the language du jour. Transmissions are similar works of very precise and clean machine work. The distance between a crank bearing or rod bearing is less than 2 thousandths on modern engines. A small amount of oil in that tiny space is all that keeps your engine from having metal on metal seizure. So one would think that when EVs reach the same scale they will be significantly cheaper than ICE vehicles.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tmh88j 5y agoNice! What engine did you build? >The distance between a crank bearing or rod bearing is less than 2 thousandths on modern engines. A small amount of oil in that tiny space is all that keeps your engine from having metal on metal seizure. The BMW S65 and S85 engines are prime examples of what happens when the wrong tolerances are chosen. I can't think of another engine family where rod bearings are considered a maintenance item.
- specialp 5y agoI built an LSX (Aftermarket GM) iron block engine (V8 LS) for a CTS V. I had to get some very precise tools (Have to measure to 10,000ths) or they were useless for bearing clearances and verifying cylinder diameters. My cylinders were 4.155 bore, and the bearing clearances were around 1.8 thousandths. Forged pistons, rods and crank. I had cracked a cylinder/piston on the original LSA. I did not trust anyone to do the work so I did a lot of research and did it all myself. I appreciate someone asking because my friends and software dev co workers aren't interested :)
- tmh88j 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- larsnystrom 5y agoIn a few decades the internal combustion engine will be to transportation what the typewriter is to typing today. It’s kind of mind boggling, but there is really no alternative if we want to stop increasing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere.
- Viker 5y agoHmm... Hard to beat that energy density when the workload is large. Trucks, tractors, planes, ships. Sure consumer cars will be EV but ICEs are not going anywhere
- legulere 5y agoDon’t forget to talk about rockets! Although there weight is more important than volume.
- jabl 5y agoVolume matters too, especially for lower stages. There's a reason for the lack of success of hydrolox 1st stages.
- whatever1 5y agoPeople have hard time grasping how much energy chemical bonds can hold. 15 gallons of gasoline store 500kWh of energy. That is 5 tesla model s worth of energy. Efficiency plays role for our day to day car tasks, but when you have to deal with external forces or higher requirements of momentum, then you need more energy period. Towing, beating high-speed drag / waves, climbing high, cannot be addressed with smarter design. You need to be able to store somehow enough energy to deal with these external forces / additional required momentum
- outworlder 5y ago> 15 gallons of gasoline store 500kWh of energy. That is 5 tesla model s worth of energy. Yes. However, the Carnot efficiency means that most of it is lost as heat. Suddenly the advantage is not that large anymore.
- fideloper 5y agowhoops thought this was an article about basecamp
- josefresco 5y agoIf you like these kind of animations, I found this website a while ago: https://jacoboneal.com https://jacoboneal.com *Graphic designer & 3D artist. Creator of animagraffs.com
- tyingq 5y agoThe quality of the explanations, and progression of complexity, reminded me of an old video that explains how a car's differential (rear end) works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI Skip to 3:30 for the explanatory part.
- alanbernstein 5y agoWow, this video was fantastic, thanks for sharing. I see how the progression reminded you of this, but the physical demo presents as more of a history-of-mechanisms lesson, which is fascinating. I also appreciated the humor. They seem to have built a working mockup of a car with the driveshaft penetrating the passenger compartment, just to make the joke that it would be inconvenient to rest luggage on the spinning shaft.
- warmwaffles 5y agoIf you really want a rabbit hole, I suggest this guy's channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwosUnVH6AINmxtqkNJ3Fbg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwosUnVH6AINmxtqkNJ3Fbg
- obiwanpallav1 5y agoThis video is a gift.
- csours 5y agoIf the author is reading this: A great addition would be common breakdown reasons, perhaps on another page. Something I didn't really think about until recently: solid metal bearings are used on the crank and piston journals as they can handle more force than ball or roller bearings. In other areas, ball and roller bearings are used to minimize energy loss.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pierrec 5y agoWell done. According to the author's Patreon, this is his first article that's "Paid for by patrons" though no details are given. His Patreon is set up so that donations happen whenever he publishes a new article. I guess the advantage over recurring donations is that it doesn't pressure him to crank out content - he can just do it on his own schedule, and donations are always justified. https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski
- toxik 5y agoThis was excellent, but should perhaps be clarified that this is a gasoline engine - diesels don’t ignite by spark, but by immense pressure in the chamber. This also invalidates the “you cannot add fuel to increase power” of gasoline engines. Diesels can (and should!) run at lower rpm; they don’t stall because the ECU can add fuel to increase power output.
- keanebean86 5y agoWhat I want to try is replacing valves with electric iris mechanisms. The computer would signal the iris to open or close depending on the situation. No more complicated variable valve stuff. Just hold the iris open longer. Also no more interference engines and timing chain/belt changes. Iris: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iris_Diaphragm.gif https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iris_Diaphragm.gif Edit: fixed typo, added link to iris gif
- toxik 5y agoIt’s a good question, why is only fuel injection and ignition computer controlled? The intake and exhaust valves must also be solenoid controllable.
- opwieurposiu 5y agoThis exists, but it is very expensive. https://www.freevalve.com/freevalve-technology/ https://www.freevalve.com/freevalve-technology/
- LeonM 5y agoSwedish hypercar builder Koenigsegg has made a system like this, they call it FreeValve. Their upcoming car called the Gemera will feature FreeValve, its 2.0L 4-cylinder is said to generate over 600HP. Though it must be said that this is a 1.5 million dollar car, so don't expect this kind of performance per displacement from other brands. A guy on Youtube made his own version of freevalve, and got it to work on a Mazda Miata: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9KJ_f7REGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9KJ_f7REGw
- RaiausderDose 5y agobrillant explanation. I always wanted to know how an engine really works.
- zmanji 5y agoaaaaaa
- npunt 5y agoAnother great Bartosz Ciechanowski creation. Also check out his past work [1] about light & shadows, cameras & lenses, color spaces, floating point, etc. [1] https://ciechanow.ski/archives https://ciechanow.ski/archives
- nzealand 5y agoHaynes sells an excellent Build Your Own Internal Combustion Engine model, which teaches children about all of these concepts.
- yashksagar 5y agogreat find - i love the one on Cameras and Lenses too, great use of interactivity for pedagogy
- fernly 5y agoCan't remember where I first learned this, twas years ago -- unforgettable names for the four engine strokes: Suck, Squeeze, Pop, Phooey
- FabHK 5y agoI know them (almost poetically, though not necessarily politically correct) as: Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow.
- Sosh101 5y agoThis is amazing educational content.
- qwertox 5y agoOne of those web pages which deserves an award. Some place in some kind of Internet Hall of Fame, an historical archive which shows the only best highlights of what websites were actually capable of presenting. Milestones of web development. This page summarizes pretty good what web technology is capable of, when in the hands of a real professional. --- Ok, I just realized this is from Bartosz Ciechanowski, and this reminded me of the Cameras and Lenses [1] article which I've seen recently. It was the same kind of quality. This man is a real genius. [1] https://ciechanow.ski/cameras-and-lenses/ https://ciechanow.ski/cameras-and-lenses/
- pitspotter 5y agohttps://ciechanow.ski/cameras-and-lenses/ https://ciechanow.ski/cameras-and-lenses/ > [...] We’ve barely scratched the surface of optics and camera lens A real genius certainly, but, I'm always doing this; bad choice of metaphor here!
- hutzlibu 5y ago"bad choice of metaphor here! " Or a funny one.
- BlueTemplar 5y agoYeah, and to think that some people are incredulous when I say that I need animation support in my electronic documents ! This is even better, I will bookmark it as an example.
- exhaze 5y agoSaw a startup recently building something like “PowerPoint for animated documents” - https://www.unscene.app/ https://www.unscene.app/ Crazy that no one’s made this before
- BlueTemplar 5y agoReally cool, but : - For the love of God, why a web app ?!? - We pretty much already have what I'm asking for in the form of MHTML, I just need Firefox support !
- senbarryobama 5y agoWho did the 3D graphics for this post? EDIT: https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski/status/1387827101294686210 https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski/status/1387827101294686210
- globular-toast 5y agoOver the years I've learned how most parts of a car work at a basic level. Engines, clutches, gearboxes, differentials etc. I can't help but feel a bit sad that it might all go away within my lifetime. Electric cars are essentially just a battery and a motor. They're just not very interesting.
- mrfusion 5y agoIsn’t it risky for the timing to rely on a rubber belt? Does it never slip? Even a mm of slippage seems like it would make the valve timing stop matching the pistons?
- frosted-flakes 5y agoTiming belts are toothed, and if installed correctly they will never slip. Modern kevlar timing belts are near-indestructible under normal use. The real problem is the pulleys—once those bearings wear out, they can seize, causing the belt to slip or even break.
- pjc50 5y agoTiming belts have teeth. Occasionally chains are used instead; more expensive and heavier, but more durable. You do need to maintain the timing either way it it will destroy the valves.
- bluedino 5y agoIf the engine is a non-interference design, losing the belt won’t be catastrophic for the valves
- elihu 5y agoI think another reason belts are common is that chains tend to be a bit noisier.
- thereisnospork 5y ago>Timing belts have teeth. To expand: It is the teeth that make belts timing belts, they keep the 'timing' (relative rotational orientation) of 2 or more toothed pulleys. In an ICE the camshafts are locked to a 2:1 ratio to the crank shaft, in a 3d printer it keeps an axis fixed relative to the stepper motor shaft.
- blamazon 5y agoIn addition to what frosted-flakes said, many engines are “non interference” design so that if the belt snaps or jumps a tooth the engine won’t be destroyed, and the belt will just need to be replaced. However, non interference engines are not as compact as interference engines. Many engines also use a timing chain instead of a timing belt, but this carries extra weight and requires lubrication. It’s all about tradeoffs!
- umvi 5y agoHow were these animations made? SolidWorks?
- 49yearsold 5y agoThis is unbelievably awesome! I wish I had such material and teacher like Bartosz Ciechanowski when I was learning IC engine during my undergrad for mechanical engineering. Thanks a million to Bartosz wherever you are and whoever you are! Simply wonderful! Thank you, thank you, and thank you!
- therein 5y agoI have always wondered, if it would be possible to make a small enough internal combustion engine so that you could just have it laying around in an apartment, sitting a few feet away from you, powering your appliances or charging a 12V or 24V battery. Dispensing the exhaust through a long tube. If all goes well, complete combustion of propane should yield CO2 instead of CO anyway. An additional enclosure shouldn't be an issue given the generator is small enough anyway. The smallest propane powered generator I can find is basically still not much more silent or smaller than Honda EB2200. Imagine a 350W generator that you can connect to a camping style propane tank that you use to charge some batteries. I played around with setting up such a system with a Sterling engine but couldn't achieve high efficiency. Surprised to see no YouTuber with the necessary machining skills and CNC equipment attempted to build a mini internal combustion engine / inverter generator.
- catmanjan 5y agoWashing machines and other appliances used to be powered by ICE when the grid was not widespread
- nemo44x 5y agoWouldn’t it be loud as hell? Even 4-stroke small engines are inefficient all things considered.
- chrisdalke 5y agoFor sure miniature gensets exist! They're often used on gas RC / autonomous airplanes to generate supplemental electricity. Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yB49G756OI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yB49G756OI I think the answer is that the miniaturization reduces efficiency, adds a ton of tiny, expensive parts/maintenance, and doesn't generate a lot of power compared to what you can store in a battery. So while the idea is cool, it's really only applicable in a few specialized use-cases like long-duration drone flight. You've got to also compare it to other available power generation schemes -- A single 250W solar panel is far cheaper, simpler, and eco-friendly.
- baybal2 5y agoYes, first 40% efficient ICE was made almost a century ago, but those were very big engines.
- alanbernstein 5y agoA few thoughts while reading this: In addition to a deeper understanding of engine manufacturing considerations than I even knew I cared to learn, this article helps me appreciate why people are into engine work. The perfect tolerances and synchronization of these machines makes me a little ashamed to use the word "engineer" in my title of "software engineer". There is no real comparison of the quality of the result. And then I skimmed the source, and it makes me think the author deserves that title. It also validates my belief in vanilla javascript. edit: And later it occurs to me that Mr. Ciechanowski is a true craftsman of software; handmade and built to 1) Be beautiful (and informative), 2) last for years. (The open web standards are the ones that seem to stick around the longest, for better or for worse. (I'm ignorant of the shader world though))
- H8crilA 5y agoExcuse me, but modern CPUs are way more complicated than this, even if you only look at "arranging events in time". Like several orders of magnitude more complicated. Anyone who has touched VHDL/Verilog knows how delicate signal propagation is, and how crafty you have to be with the clock. And even if you never tinkered with transistors surely you've at least looked at assembly code, and the amount of painstakingly detailed data layout orchestration that is going on there. A simple printf("hello world") is magical if you know what happens under the hood.
- 1cvmask 5y agoI doubt most of the readers here on HN ever wrote anything in assembly. It is like comical interaction of Marc Andreesen and Mark Zuckerberg and how Zuckerberg had no idea on the Netscape browser (let alone Mosaic or Gophers). https://www.businessinsider.com/when-mark-zuckerberg-met-marc-andreessen-he-didnt-know-what-netscape-did-2012-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/when-mark-zuckerberg-met-mar... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)
- alanbernstein 5y agoWell, Electrical and Computer Engineering is an extremely precise discipline, and while the line between hardware and software can be fuzzy in many cases, web software is an entirely different world from VLSI design, and even from instruction set design. And of course, some software, at all abstraction levels, is extremely well engineered as well. But it doesn't seem to be the norm. Most importantly, I'm talking about my own ability more than the best in the field.
- nemo44x 5y agoWhat are the odds 50 years from now, the ICE becomes a hobby of the upper middle and upper classes? Much like analogue audio recording is becoming.
- sssilver 5y agoWonderful page. Here's something a bit more poetic on the subject: The man behind the smallest V-12 engine in the world[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1pJIVqCC1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1pJIVqCC1E
- ekianjo 5y agoWhat is the best way to archive such a page for offline browsing? I tried ArchiveBox on this, but all the animations are gone in the offline version (no matter which method was used).
- hourislate 5y agoIf you want to take the experience further, I would recommend the following Redline engine rebuild time lapses that Hagerty has. They are mesmerizing and incredible. Their engine re-builder David is a master. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHKCmmH-x9mI1aCu3Xr4_qeaz9lTJn_XE https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHKCmmH-x9mI1aCu3Xr4_...
- dugditches 5y agoThat's the one nicer thing of motorcycles, is their simplicity. This fellows videos are pleasant. In that he makes 'experimental' engines with a very modest shop. Often using a hacksaw and a BBQ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Xr1bmbZ_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Xr1bmbZ_s
- hourislate 5y agoThanks for this. Loved it!
- cratermoon 5y agoWhen I was a boy, my dad decided that our '66 Mustang with a straight 4-cylinder engine needed new piston rings. I helped a bit but mostly watched as he tore down the engine to the barest elements, only the engine mounts keeping the block held up in the compartment. The crankshaft, connecting rods, tappers valves, piston heads, piston rods, all laid out neatly on the garage floor along with all the nuts, bolts, washers, seals, gaskets, belts, and everything else you see in this video. Although I really appreciate the reliability, efficiency, and durability that modern engine design has brought, a part of me is sad that modern cars are all about chips and software, and the average guy in his garage or under a shadetree can no longer break one down to the bare bones of electromechanical parts and put it back together better than it was.
- pengaru 5y ago> Although I really appreciate the reliability, efficiency, and durability that modern engine design has brought, a part of me is sad that modern cars are all about chips and software, and the average guy in his garage or under a shadetree can no longer break one down to the bare bones of electromechanical parts and put it back together better than it was. That's a totally flawed understanding of modern ICE vehicles. There was an era of vacuum-line misery separating the 70s and 90s, where you'd almost certainly never get it back together and functioning good as new again with the literal miles of vacuum lines and solenoids. But modern stuff, especially with just 4 cylinders, is relatively simple and entirely DIY servicable. Wiring harnesses have replaced all the vacuum lines, and everything has a physically unique connector pair, and the harness routing is well described in the service manual. So all the guesswork is gone there, honestly the worst part on new stuff is not overlooking any of the grounding lugs. I share your attitude WRT modern EVs, but I bet if we just treat the controller and battery as black boxes we don't attempt to disassemble and service, the rest is just more of the same simple machinery except with no hazardous gasoline and motor oil to drain and handle.
- Reason077 5y ago> "Wiring harnesses have replaced all the vacuum lines" Of course, now days the wiring harnesses themselves have become huge and unwieldy in many vehicles - literal miles of cables! Automakers are looking at technologies like automotive ethernet and even wireless communication in order to reduce the cost, size and complexity of wiring. > "I share your attitude WRT modern EVs, but I bet if we just treat the controller and battery as black boxes we don't attempt to disassemble and service" Some EV batteries are quite serviceable (eg: LEAF), with the pack being able to be disassembled right down to the cell level relatively easily. Although admittedly, some modern pack designs are moving away from this level of serviceability (eg: Tesla, whose cells are cemented in place with fire-retardant foam/glue. Disassembly is a one-way operation). Things like motor controllers/inverters tend to be very reliable so there is rarely any need to disassemble or service them during the lifetime of the vehicle. If they do fail there's a ready supply of affordable replacement parts, thanks to salvage from crashed vehicles, so it's often easier to just replace a faulty part than attempt to service.
- B1FF_PSUVM 5y agoHat off, deep bow. Haven't seen such clarity of exposition in decades, if ever. Pity it's about technology on the way out, but hey, "perfection is achieved on the edge of collapse". P.S. Learned a few things, and I'm even more amazed that all this actually works and gets things moving at over 100 mph ... looks like a very clever Rube Goldberg joke.
- iaw 5y agoI spent a couple years trying to fully understand automotive systems tip to tail and did pretty well (excluding transmissions, they're magic). This is the best illustration of how engines work that I've ever seen.
- xixixao 5y agoOpen devtools, Sources, ice.js, on line 5193, change 2 to 40. Fixes the speed of the first animation. Disclaimer: I don't know what the real speed should be. The whole website is amazing though.
- thunderbong 5y agoThis page is a work of art. And going through the archives[0], looks like all the pages are! It's really, really rare to see this level of care, attention and detail put to something we all consider will be seen only for a few seconds. But as a testament to the adage "the cream rises to the top", I spent around an hour going through the website. Pure craftsmanship. Thank you. [0]: https://ciechanow.ski/archives/ https://ciechanow.ski/archives/
- mraza007 5y agoAnyone who’s interested in learning how the car engine works This is worth watching https://youtu.be/ZQvfHyfgBtA https://youtu.be/ZQvfHyfgBtA
- joshuaengler 5y agoThis guys writings are consistently some of the best in the world. His web design mixed with the articulate easy to understand vocabulary, and fantastic easy-to-understand motion illustrations are absolutely the finest I've ever seen.
- arduinomancer 5y agoAgreed. The graphics/animation are obviously great but even the actual explanations/text are really clear and well written.
- bitwize 5y agoReminds me of how I got into computing in the first place. During the 1970s, my dad designed an engine, similar in principle to the Wiseman Engine: https://wisemanengine.com https://wisemanengine.com To better explore and elucidate his ideas, he bought a TRS-80 Model 16 computer (Model II compatible) with high resolution graphics option and wrote a BASIC program that could compare the mechanical advantage graphs of several different engine mechanisms including his own. He had begun to add a visualization of the mechanism itself to the program. He had only completed the slider crank (what is used in most auto engines), but there it was, animated at half a frame a second: a wireframe drawing of a piston that moved up and down, pushing on a crank that turned the crankshaft. And my brain was like what manner of high wizardry is this!! This site is exemplary of what I had glimpsed that day, going on 40 years ago: the power computers have to explain our world and bring alive the principles that drive it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 5y agoThis, like the Fourier Transform webpage, is a masterpiece. Silly Question: when I add gasoline to my car it's a liquid. When it enters a cylinder of my Engine, mixed with air, is it still a liquid? Is it a gas? Aeresolized? What causes the change in state and when/where?
- wolfgang42 5y agoIt’s an aerosol, fine droplets of liquid in a stream of air. It used to be the carburetor that added the fuel to the airstream (by way of the Bernoulli principle); modern cars use a fuel injector, which works on much the same principle as a spray bottle to create the fuel-air mixture directly in the cylinder.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- petrocrat 5y agoCan you share a link to the Fourier Transform page that you mentionted, please?
- Waterluvian 5y agohttps://www.jezzamon.com/fourier/ https://www.jezzamon.com/fourier/
- chmk 5y agoImpressive didactic gem here, this is what the web was created for.
- nielsbot 5y agoAnother great page! I just have one minor complaint: I wish the spaceball rotations always kept the y-axis oriented upwards... That would help me navigate the models much more easily...
- gfaure 5y agoIt's a beautiful touch that the animation demonstrating the spring itself has a spring action on its playback slider.
- _acco 5y agoAnimagraffs also has an amazing short on the ICE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQvfHyfgBtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQvfHyfgBtA
- ehnto 5y agoWow, that was perfectly executed. A testament to what the web can be.
- enono 5y agoHOW
- cbsudux 5y agoThis is awesome. How did you create the animations?
- csbartus 5y agoThis post has 1199 points and 290 comments, a 4:1 ratio. This always rings me an alarm: Hey, this is something extraordinary even Hacker News can't deal with it (via the usual way, like on posts with an inverse points/comments ratio, indicating hate and flame inside). Right, this guy is a genius. Together with Amelia Wattenberger they represent a new wave in storytelling: Meaningful content and meaningful interactions. The previous wave was proven to be a bubble. Embraced, supported and pushed by mainstream media (NYTimes, Bloomberg, Spotify) the formula for the first wave was not successful: Meaningless (average) content + Meaningless (flashy, art-pour-art, attention-seeking, etc) interaction.
- publicola1990 5y agoWhat tool is being used for the interactive animations? They are really impressive.
- arendtio 5y agoI like the detailed explanations and animations. It reminds me of another page, which doesn't look as polished, but has a few additional designs: http://animatedengines.com http://animatedengines.com
- shivenigma 5y agoThis is such a great article man. Love for the effort you put into this article. I seriously wish I had teachers and schools like this. I used to imagine the four strokes when I was in school but it is very hard to relate all the moving parts and how everything connects together in that age where I've never used a motorcycle or a car. Thanks for writing this.
- fractalb 5y agoWhat an excellent illustrative write-up. I don't even know what a four-stroke engine is all these years! Thanks to the author, I do know now :)
- sergeykish 5y agoAnd if want to share wonders of engineering with a kid check out How to Build a Car by Martin Sodomka [1]. Beautiful illustrations (sample on Czech [2]), translated into many languages. Series also includes How to Build a Motorcycle, How to Build a Plane, How to Build a House, How to Build a Railway. I've got all of them. [1] https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Car-high-speed-friendship/dp/1633220400 https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Car-high-speed-friendship/d... [2] https://www.kosmas.cz/knihy/173150/jak-si-postavit-auto/ https://www.kosmas.cz/knihy/173150/jak-si-postavit-auto/
- maxekman 5y agoSeeing the complexity of an ICE in contrast to mechanically simpler and much more efficient electric motors is fascinating. It makes it obvious to me what will persist, and what will become the next steam machine.
- snemvalts 5y agoJust goes to show how difficult energy storage is
- rlonn 5y agoThis makes me appreciate even more the advantages electrical motors have over ICEs. If you build a naive version of an ICE, it will have lousy performance, at best. It might not even operate without a lit of mechanical tricks and tweaks. An electrical engine, however, can be built simply and still get decent, if not great, performance. The complexity of ICEs really is a huge disadvantage and there is no turning back.
- namelosw 5y agoPerfect example of "Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it." - Edsger W. Dijkstra
- busymom0 5y agoFor those interested, the author has a lot of similarly excellent explanations over the years: https://ciechanow.ski/archives/ https://ciechanow.ski/archives/ I am curious about the 5 years gap between 2014 and 2019.
- nxpnsv 5y agoIt first feels like one of those oversimplified generic how stuff works things. But this is so much better. Really worth reading through.
- PinkPigeon 5y agoLots of very insightful comments already, I only have one thing to contribute, which is a spelling correction: "Since the piston moves down twice and up twice, it does a total of four strokes and the engine we’ve build is known as a four-stroke engine. Notice that it takes two revolutions of the crankshaft for the piston to do one full cycle of the work as it goes through the four phases: intake, compression, power, and exhaust." It should be: "the engine we've built", with a 't', not a d. /pedantry
- anticristi 5y agoThis is so incredibly amazing! It must have taken tons of time to make it happen. Looking forward to the same with turbo, intercooler and EGR. :)
- ecommerceguy 5y agoI really wish as a kid I had something like this to read/watch because the engine (don't call it a motor I've learned from engineers) still confounds me with all of the moving parts and precision. I've found Detroit Diesel videos on Youtube rather satisfying.
- Techasura 5y agoBeautiful article. If at all, mechanical engineering was this beautiful.
- barcosofttech 5y agohello
- knolan 5y agoI’m a lowly mechanical engineering lecturer. I use Jupyter notebooks to teach fluid mechanics[0]. I make videos of fluid flows with Blender and embed them with the notes along with some basic Python code examples so that students are aware of how basic code can make an Engineer’s life easier (even if Matlab is the standard platform). I also embed simple 3D models with pyGEL3D[1]. It’s fine but very limited. I’m always blown away by this gentleman’s work when it comes up here on HN and would like to use JavaScript instead, but I’ve no idea where to start. Can anyone recommend a good book or online course that would put me on the right path? [0] https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/nolankucd/MEEN20010/tree/master/ https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/nolankucd/MEEN20010/tree... [1] http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/projects/GEL/PyGEL/ http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/projects/GEL/PyGEL/
- lasagna_coder 5y agoFor the graphics: - https://webglfundamentals.org/ https://webglfundamentals.org/ - https://threejs.org/ https://threejs.org/ For general JS: - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/javascript#tutorials https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/javascript#tuto... There's other stuff like build tools, cross-browser, and other stuff, but that's likely to be confusing and not super necessary to begin with. The above should be enough to get you running with what it sounds like you want to do. I appreciate you sharing those links. I'm trying to learn mechanical engineering stuff myself, if you have any further useful learning materials I would love to see them.
- knolan 5y agoMuch appreciated. I’ll be adding to the fluid mechanics notebook this summer. What areas are you interested in?
- lasagna_coder 5y agoMechatronics, which is why I'm interested in mechanical engineering. I guess this mostly implies servomechanisms, kinematics, motors.
- 5y ago
- netfortius 5y agoMy first masters was in mechanical engineering, in the field of what ~40yrs ago was known as "Thermal Engines" (internal combustion engines, turbines, etc.). I have long departed the field (~90s), for CS (degree and work in the field, accordingly), but this article felt truly like a lost love one remembers all details about, with all good memories flooding the brain from way back... thank you!!
- quercusa 5y agoThis part delights me - check the diagram just under "now whenever we push on the bucket the spring will push it back in place" When you release the slider it springs back into place.
- smusamashah 5y agoHow can we preserve article like this forever?
- lasagna_coder 5y agoForever is a stretch, but, being the web, you can always save the page and store it somewhere locally. It'll probably be archived by the wayback machine soon anyway.
- dysrend 5y agoI wish this guy would write a textbook on life. Someone throw infinite capital at him.
- dandare 5y agoWhy are the bearings filled with pressurized oil instead of being normal ball bearings? All the other bearings in the whole car are ball bearings.
- the__alchemist 5y agoQuestion from the part of the article where the piston is introduced: We know what constrains the up and down positions of the piston; What constrains the direction of rotation of the crank?
- Sharlin 5y agoThe crank's angular momentum, which is originally derived from the turning of the starter motor.
- the__alchemist 5y agoThank you. So the engine can go either way, and the direction is determined by the initial rotation?
- Sharlin 5y agoAs far as I know, yes.
- RamRodification 5y agoCan we have better titles please?
- soperj 5y agoThat was awesome. I'd love to see another with the Wankel engine!
- lambdatronics 5y agoReally nice work! Reminds me of some of Bret Victor's stuff. The graph saying that the velocity curve of the piston is asymmetric left-right is wrong. It should be top-bottom asymmetric instead. They got the text right though. Edit: oops, I'm wrong... the position curve would be left-right symmetric while being up-down asymmetric, but then if you take the derivative you get what they are showing.
- jacksonkmarley 5y agoAwesome, so now I'm inspired to try some web graphics. This being HN, can someone suggest a good place to start in terms of tutorials/learning resources?
- nrvn 5y agoI wish entire wikipedia was as informative as this one page. Would be happy to pay for some commercial encyclopedia of that kind and quality. When I was a child I absolutely loved Encarta 96. It fit on a single CD and had enough interactive material. With today’s computing, network and disk possibilities I don’t see any reasons why nowadays there is no single curated source of truth about the world around us. Instead, all the information is spread around the vast amount of resources around World Wide Web and in order to find something meaningful you sometimes have to trudge through hordes of bullshit.
- belugacat 5y agoMake no mistake, making articles of that level of quality requires world class skills in software engineering, communication, math, foundational engineering skills (physics/mechanical/…), etc. The number of people on earth who can author such content is extremely low. The number of people with the vision, fundraising ability, and general meta skills needed to lead a team of people doing such work is likely even lower. Creating an entire encyclopedia at this level of quality and interactivity would be a Herculean project. In the meantime, we have other kinds of similar Herculean projects like Khan Academy and Wikipedia, and they’re pretty great too :)
- nrvn 5y agoI totally get the herculeanity of the effort. But I also feel there’s vacuum in this space. And I would be happy if our children had access to a high quality source of information.
- GnarfGnarf 5y agoGorgeous graphics. Masterful teaching. I'd like to see a treatment of 2-cycle engines.
- DangitBobby 5y agoI think this might be the best explanation of anything I have ever read.
- lajosbacs 5y agoIt is incredibly satisfying to watch the videos he links a the end. My favourite rabbit hole channel is definitely this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMDTXlgZeV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMDTXlgZeV4