Engine Essay, Research Paper

The four stroke engine is divided into three basic parts the intake stroke, compression stroke, combustion stroke and the exhaust stroke which all lead to the ability of the engine to get the car into motion and allow humans the ability to drive automobiles. The factors, which affect the automobiles ability to move fluently, are the concentrations, temperature, surface area and a catalyst, which are all present in order to have a smoothly running car. Cars are used everyday by billions of people worldwide and many of them do not know all of the chemical reactions taking place each time they insert a key and turn. Driving is taken for granted and people do not realize that we not have the luxury of cars without chemist who spend their days working in order to advance human kind even further.

The four stroke engine works by having piston start at the top, the intake valve open, and the piston moves down to let the engine take in a cylinder full of a air and gasoline mixture which is the is the intake stroke. A small drop of gasoline is needed to be mixed into the air for this to work. Then the piston moves back up to compress this fuel/air mixture. Compression makes the explosion more powerful. When the piston reaches the top of its stroke, the spark plug emits a spark to ignite the gasoline. The gasoline charge in the cylinder explodes, driving the piston down. Once the piston hits the bottom of its stroke, the exhaust valve opens and the exhaust leaves the cylinder to go out the tail pipe and the entire process is repeated thousands of time a minute. The exhaust pipe gives off mainly carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and unburned hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.