Engines
The flagship section: what every engine has in common, then the piston, jet, electric, rocket and marine families in depth — each concept as a live demo or a plain-language explainer.
The ideas every engine obeys, whatever it powers: torque and power, timing, mixture, efficiency.
The dyno chart, done honestly: shape a torque curve and the power curve is computed from P = T × rpm — see why peak power always sits above peak torque.
Open demo →LiveFire the spark before TDC so the pressure peak lands just after it — then raise the compression and watch the knock limit close in on the perfect timing.
Open demo →LiveOne mixture slider, three masters: power peaks rich, economy peaks lean, exhaust temperature spikes between them — and the catalyst demands exactly 14.7 : 1.
Open demo →The reciprocating engine in depth — the cycle, the geometry, the layouts and the valvetrain.
Suck, squeeze, bang, blow — one cylinder, cut away. Piston, con-rod, valves, spark and a live PV diagram, all driven by a single crank angle.
Open demo →LiveCompare the cycles side by side from one crank driver — spark vs compression ignition, and the two-stroke that fires every revolution.
Open demo →LivePlay with bore, stroke and rod ratio and watch the piston motion, inertia and side-thrust curves respond.
Open demo →LiveInline-4/6, V6, cross-plane V8 and a boxer — all running off one master crank. Watch the shaking forces show why a straight-six runs smooth.
Open demo →LiveSingle, V-twin, fours, sixes and both V8 cranks synthesised live — hear why even firing drones, a 90° V-twin gallops and a cross-plane V8 burbles.
Open demo →LiveGrind your own cam: duration and overlap shape the lift curves and slide the torque curve up the revs — while the idle pays for every degree of overlap.
Open demo →Between the crank and the road: the clutch that connects, the gearbox that translates, the differential that lets the wheels disagree.
One 103 kW engine, five gears, one falling sawtooth: pick a gear and a road speed and watch the tractive force race the drag curve — top speed is where they meet.
Open demo →No fire at all: a magnetic field that spins because three currents disagree — and the drivetrains it powers, pure and hybrid.
Three coils that never move, three currents out of step — and the field between them spins. Load an induction or synchronous rotor and watch it chase the field, live.
Open demo →The engine that carries everything it pushes against — and the logarithm that decides whether it reaches orbit.
Burn a real stage — F-1, RS-25, Merlin or Raptor — and watch the tank drain, acceleration climb and the Δv dot crawl up the Tsiolkovsky curve towards the orbit line.
Open demo →What happens to an engine when the vehicle weighs 200,000 tonnes and never stops.
One bore slider sweeps from a 2.0-litre hatchback engine to an 80 MW, three-storey ship two-stroke — and every scaling law along the way is real.
Open demo →