It's a beautiful touch that the animation demonstrating the spring itself has a spring action on its playback slider.
Internal Combustion Engine
281–290 of 415 posts
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#282Animagraffs also has an amazing short on the ICE:
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#283A 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.…
> 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. I think that's because the barrier to entry is too low and anybody is being called a "software engineer" these days. But think about a system which makes proper use of synchronization primitives, like an OS kernel or a robotic control, or a CPU design like the other guy…
> Those things can be as complex as an ICU engine.
From a complexity perspective an ICU isn’t nearly as complex as even something as simple is a script scraping a webpages for links and queuing them up for further crawling. I’m not sure if “complex” is the word you are going for but even the TCP state machine has significantly more complexity than an ICU and that’s just a fragment of what it takes to transmit some data.
The composability and abstractions we have in this industry allows you to quickly dwarf any regular mechanical system. There is a reason this is a whole new era beyond the industrial revolution.
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Tesla already uses aluminum for power cabling because it’s cheap and lighter weight." Ugh, really ? That offends my sensibilities ...
Why? A properly engineered aluminum power cable is superior to a copper one when weight is at a premium.
Aluminum is less ductile and prone to galvanic corrosion. It can definitely be engineered to work properly, but copper is much more forgiving.
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#285This, 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?
Can you share a link to the Fourier Transform page that you mentionted, please?
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think cats are to address greenhouse gasses; they're focused more on reducing pollutants that affect local air quality and human health. The main greenhouse gas from a car is carbon dioxide. The amount you create is directly proportional to the amount of fuel you burn. I don't know why modern cats are expensive; it might have to do with the price of platinum, palladium, and so on, and the relative amount of t…
> A cheap generic cat might have the bare minimum amount of catalyst, and might not do a very good job It depends on the car/engine. My old Mazda RX-8 had a huge cat - longer than the muffler and cost me $2,000 to replace (including labor) back in the late 2000's. The rotary engine in that vehicle had a terribly difficult time passing California's emission laws even when it was brand new off the lot - which led to st…
> moved high volumes of air through the exhaust to heat the cat sooner and somehow improve it's numbers
This is because the catalyst works more efficiently at higher temperatures. Emission regs also test vehicles under a cold start. The quicker the cat can be heated up, the quicker it starts working, and that equals fewer total emissions over a given period of operation.
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#287A 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.…
> 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. I think that's because the barrier to entry is too low and anybody is being called a "software engineer" these days. But think about a system which makes proper use of synchronization primitives, like an OS kernel or a robotic control, or a CPU design like the other guy…
I kinda wish my title was simply “Systems Administrator” which is probably the closest thing to a “software mechanic” that we have. Most of our titles have been inflated however.
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#288When 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, washe…
> 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.…
An aspect that appeals to me is interchangeability. If you needed to replace an engine or other major components, even just to similar items in the manufacturers lineup, there's definitely a "golden era" of late 80s to early 2000s cars where that is feasible for the...more enthusiast home mechanic. While not impossible for modern cars, it is far far more difficult.
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I think that's because the barrier to entry is too low and anybody is being called a "software engineer" these days. But think about a system which makes proper use of synchronization primitives, like an OS kernel or a robotic control, or a CPU design like the other guy…
> Those things can be as complex as an ICU engine. From a complexity perspective an ICU isn’t nearly as complex as even something as simple is a script scraping a webpages for links and queuing them up for further crawling. I’m not sure if “complex” is the word you are going for but even the TCP state machine has significantly more complexity than an ICU and that’s just a fragment of what it takes to transmit some da…
Quantifying complexity really depends on the level of abstraction though.
Scraping a static webpage is simple when examined at the level of abstraction involving Python and ready made packages. An ICE is similarly simple when examined from the perspective of basic mechanics, as in the article under discussion.
As you note, scraping that static webpage is no longer simple when you include as part of your assessment the TCP state machine, kernel interface, NIC firmware, and similar layers that had previously been abstracted away. Neither is the ICE though once metallurgy, machining, oil chemistry, and the physics of combustion are included.
Granted, pursued to the logical extreme software eventually drags in everything the ICE did and more due to the physical hardware. But then modern engines are controlled by computers ...
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#290A 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.…
Excuse 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 d…
Well, 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.