NEVER be confused by HORSEPOWER and TORQUE again - HP and TORQUE EXPLAINED in the MOST VISUAL WAY

in today's video i'll be using legos to give you the most visual explanation and demonstration of horsepower and torque if you have ever been confused by the difference between horsepower and torque i guarantee that after watching this video these two concepts will never confuse you again so let's get started and we're starting with torque now this large lego motor outputs 0.14 newton meters of torque and the smaller lego motor outputs 0.03 newton meters of torque what's a newton meter well a newton meter is a measure of torque it measures how much torque is being generated and what is torque well the simplest explanation of torque is that it's a rotational force it's the rotational equivalent of linear force when you take this bolt and push it you're applying a linear force to it but when you decide to bolt it down you're applying torque to it in both cases a certain amount of force is present but what's different is the direction of that force so our lego motors are outputting a certain amount of torque that we have expressed in newton meters one newton meter of torque simply equals the force of one newton applied at the end of an arm that is one meter long so for example if we take this bolt and use this wrench which is one meter long and apply a force of one newton at the end of that wrench the resulting torque present at the bolt will be one newton meter newton meters confuse you no problem because torque can also be easily expressed in foot pounds one foot pound of torque is equal to the force of one pound being applied at the end of an arm that is one foot long so in this scenario i'm using the stored energy in my muscles to generate torque at the bolt our lego motors are doing the same thing they're using the electrical energy stored in these batteries to generate torque or rotational force and as we have seen our large lego motor is outputting more torque than our small motor this difference in torque can easily be felt if we install a small shaft into our motor we can feel the difference in rotational force coming from these motors the difference in torque output is very obvious and the large motor feels much stronger and it's very difficult to stop it the difference in torque can also be observed if we install a heavy attachment onto our motors we can observe that the large lego motor has enough torque to overcome the weight of this heavy attachment and can move it however the smaller motor doesn't output enough torque to overcome the weight of this heavy attachment and thus cannot move it the convenient thing here is that these lego motors can easily be compared to internal combustion engines in petrol or diesel powered vehicles and even more so to electric motors in battery electric vehicles just like our lego motors the motors in modern electric cars use the stored energy in their battery packs to generate torque on the other hand internal combustion engines rely on the stored energy in fossil fuels to generate torque but despite their different energy sources all output torque at the end of a shaft both the torque output and the shaft of an electric motor and the torque output at the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine get connected to a bunch of different things but ultimately their purpose is to drive the wheels of a vehicle now let's move on to horsepower we already know the torque output of our two motors now let's add the horsepower output as well and here we have the horsepower output of our two lego motors you notice something peculiar here the large motor has more than four times the torque of the small motor but it has buried twice the horsepower how is this possible well to understand how this happens we have to understand what horsepower is the key word in the word horsepower is power what is power power is the rate at which work is done in more simple terms power measures how often a certain force is applied over a given period of time you could even call power activity it measures how many times you can repeat the same action over a given period of time this means that power introduces time into the equation when we speak about torque time isn't a factor we simply measure how much rotational force is generated and that is our torque that's it but horsepower measures how much force is generated over a period of time this means that torque is influenced by only one factor the amount of rotational force but horsepower is influenced by two factors the amount of force and how many times that force can be exerted over a given period of time now we're going to attach these two blocks onto the shafts of our lego motors so that we can more easily observe how fast each of them rotates as you can see the small motor actually rotates noticeably faster than the large motor in fact over a period of one minute the small motor makes 275 full rotations while the large motor makes only 146 rotations this means that although it can't generate as much torque as the large motor the small motor applies its torque at a greater rate over the same period of time in other words it outputs its rotational force more frequently it's more active than the large motor and because horsepower is influenced by both the amount of force and the rate at which that force is applied the small motor can generate half the horsepower of the large motor with only a quarter of the torque this also means that while torque can be felt and observed horsepower cannot be felt in the same sense it can only be observed if we put our fingers against the shaft we're feeling the torque we're feeling the force against our fingers when we're sitting inside a car and the car accelerates we're again feeling the force pushing us against the seat we can only feel the amount of force and because torque is only a force we can feel it but horsepower isn't only a force it's a measure of the rate of force in the case of engines and motors horsepower is basically torque multiplied by rpm which means that we can't really feel it the same way we can feel torque something else that's interesting is that our small and the large motors are pretty analogous to a truck and a sports car engine truck engines are usually physically very large a truck like this will typically have an engine with around 13 liters of displacement and from an engine of this size you can expect to get around 450 horsepower and around 2950 newton meters of torque really puts our lego motors into perspective doesn't it on the other hand a sports car engine will be dramatically small but it will be capable of matching or even outperforming a truck engine in terms of horsepower although it won't come even close when it comes to torque in fact these are the specs of an actual truck and an actual sports car the sports car can outperform the truck in terms of horsepower only because the truck has a very low max rpm the truck engine can't rotate beyond 2500 rpm in contrast to this the sports car engine can rev up to 7 7000 rpm but the sports car engine can't come close in terms of torque one of the key reasons behind this is sheer physical size often the torque output of an engine will correlate to its physical size this is also true for humans for example a larger human will have larger muscles and will often be capable of generating greater forces than a smaller human in a similar manner a larger engine will have larger pistons and larger combustion chambers which means you can stuff more air and fuel into the space and you can generate more powerful combustions which result in greater force applied on the crankshaft and thus a greater torque output at the crankshaft a truck engine needs massive torque outputs because it needs the massive force in order to be able to move a much greater amount of weight than the car engine has to move on the other hand the sports car engine generates its torque at a much greater rate thus it generates more horsepower and there you have it i hope this finally manages to clear away any uncertainties you might have when it comes to horsepower and torque as always thanks a lot for watching and i'll be seeing you with more fun and useful stuff on the d4h

Channel: driving 4 answers

Views: 2,733,322

Rating: 4.9325008 out of 5

Keywords: horsepower, torque, horsepower vs torque, what's the difference?, explained, engineering explained, what's more important?, v8 engine, electric motor, 1000 horsepower, lb-ft, HP, Nm, kW, 1 MW engine, fast cars, car, new car, buy a car, car buying, lego, newton meter, foot pound, horsepower of a car, torque explained, horsepower explained, d4a, driving 4 answers, turbo, lego power functions, horsepower meaning, camaro horsepower, camaro ss horsepower, tesla horsepower, tesla

Id: MBXpB4bDp_o

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Sun May 02 2021