Car Engines

To talk about engines, we had some friends of ours over for dinner—Derek works in airplane design and engineering, but he has also always loved cars too, so he agreed to talk to the kids about how car engines work. It was fascinating to hear him relate it all so simply as he pointed to different parts of the car engine. It almost made me feel like I could learn to fix one, it seemed so straightforward how all the parts worked together!

Some links about engines:

Here is an animation of a traditional four-stroke engine that makes it very clear.

Here are some more resources from when we learned about Diesel engines.

And even more on engines, from when we were learning about airplanes.

Why you might use a flat-plane vs cross-plane V8 engine

Why the engine types sound "so different" (ha ha, though I personally still can't hear that much of a difference!)

And here is a video where you can hear all those different engine sounds. It's long, but if you're a 14-year-old boy who likes cars, it won't seem long to you! :)

Another engine sound comparison

Automobile Unit Study

(click to enlarge)

This Automobile Unit is one I promised Abe ages ago. I'm not sure how he got so interested in cars, since I have hardly ever given a second thought to them, but somehow he did. And lots of this unit covered things he already knew! But it was fun for the rest of us to catch up with him a little. :) For Sebastian's part, he loves road signs and markings, so we made sure to loop those into our unit as well.

We spent quite a long time covering all these things, and many of the days didn't really have something to take a picture of, but there are a few other posts under the "Automobile Unit" tag.

Some miscellaneous links:

The difference between "brake horsepower" and "wheel horsepower"

"Bloodhound SSC" is the car that's trying to break Thrust SSC's speed record

This place sounds really cool. The boys say they would love to go there someday!

Car Talk! I used to love listening to this show in the car on Saturday mornings when my mom and I were out doing errands.

Ideas from a unit study on the Model T Ford.

Model T coloring page.

And here's my Pinterest page for the Automobile Unit, with many of these same links.

We watched some carefully-selected episodes of "Top Gear" with the children, but man it was hard to find ones without swearing or crudeness! Too bad, because they loved that show. We also watched Disney's "Cars 2" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" during this unit.

Speaking of "Top Gear," though, by FAR our favorite book of the unit was by Richard Hammond from "Top Gear." It's called Car Science and it was just excellent. It explained every aspect of how cars work, in an engaging way, without talking down to the reader, but in simple enough terms that I understood concepts I was totally baffled by in other books. I highly recommend it!

Piston, Jet, and Rocket Engines

Engines! So interesting. We learned about the basic four-stroke engine, as well as diesel engines, during our Train Unit. And early planes used this type of piston engine. See this animation for a demonstration.

(In fact, this is one of our favorite sites ever—it shows animations of different kinds of engines at work. Certain of the children could watch this site, mesmerized, for hours at a time. :))

Later, the jet engine was invented, and there are several types of jet engine: Turbofan/turbojet engines (high- and low-bypass); Turboprops; and Turboshafts. It took us a while to get them straight, but this site does a good job of explaining the differences.

Here's another site that talks about types of jet engine.

We also learned about ramjets and scramjets which are used in rocket propulsion and hypersonic flight.

Here's a "boring" (self-described) animation of a jet engine at work. :)

This site has some good information on engines.

As does this one, including parts of an engine.

Here's a simple activity to demonstrate how rocket propulsion works. We tried this with a long balloon and with a round one. The round one worked MUCH better (more volume of air, I suppose).

The balloon being propelled along the string!

A video about how jet engines work. And on the same subject, another video we really liked.

Sonic booms are so interesting! Here are two videos about them.

Diesel engines and Diesel-electric Locomotives

Seb's diesel engine diagram

Maybe if I'd ever been interested in cars, I would have known something about the internal combustion engine. But I haven't been, so this was all news to me. And as usual, once I begin to learn about something I start to see how interesting it is! I think the diesel engine is amazing!

It works much like the gasoline engine, but with much more air compression, so the fuel doesn't need a spark plug to make it ignite---it simply ignites when it comes in contact with the compressed (very hot!) air.

Ky's diagram---Abe's writing

Here's a great explanation of how the diesel engine works

Wonderful animations of diesel engines (you can slow them down and speed them up as desired)

Another animation of a diesel engine

A video explaining the diesel engine

Something a bit different---how locomotives are made

This old cartoon about How Diesel Engines Work is so awesome, I can't even describe it. We loved it! You have to watch it. Here's part I and part II.

Steam Locomotives

Steam locomotives are what we think of when we think of trains! So many people love them, and now we do too! You can learn SO MANY things about steam locomotives and steam engines, so we'll just include a few of our favorite resources.

First, a concise explanation of how they work.

An animation of a steam engine. (You can browse this page for other types of animated engines as well---my boys spent hours looking over the animations!)

We really liked this movie, The Golden Age of Steam Trains. You can just start watching at that link and follow links on the sidebar to each successive part, or find them here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

We made these folded paper steam locomotives.

This looks like a really fun project to build your own steam engine

This link is to the Peter's Railway site where there are some useful pictures and charts showing how steam locomotives work. I have a lot to say about Peter's Railway and I guess this is as good as any place to say it. In short,  WE LOVE IT! We ran into this site and through it, learned about the Peter's Railway books. I was intrigued by the format and ordered some so we could read them. They are wonderful! We love the stories, the pictures, and most especially the technical explanations. They are detailed enough for even my technical-diagram-loving children, yet clear enough to easily understand. They explain things we couldn't find explained in any of the many, many other train books we read. And the author, Chris Vine, is the nicest person you can imagine. We emailed him with some follow-up technical questions and he responded with a long, detailed answer that included links and pictures and friendly encouragement for the boys to get good at "maths" so they could enjoy physics and engineering to the fullest. :) The boys now just adore Mr. Vine and play "Bongo" and "Fiery Fox" (those are the names of Mr. Vine's miniature steam engine and the engine in the PR books) all day long.

There are some other fun videos on the Peter's Railway site, too, but we are especially glad we found the books. We have already read them over and over, and we are saving up to order the other books as well. We hope Mr. Vine writes more books soon!