post some pics of engines worthy of museum space. recip, rotary, turbine... doesn't matter. wierd and wonderful. a falconer 12 cylinder spark ignited piston engine.
Shine a heat lamp onto the rubber bands on one side of the heat engine. As the rubber bands are heated, they contract, moving the center of mass away from the center of rotation. This causes the engine to rotate! Ya just gotta luv astrophysicists!
i've always has a fascination for the woerd and wonderful... how about oposing twin cylinder compression ignition recip engines? or maybe a modern radial?
Or both! I always thought that the goal for efficiency was to reduce frictional losses/rotational mass. Seems like this thing would have both, in spades. But then, beauty and efficiency rarely go hand-in-hand, or so I'm told? Except for this one:
beauty and efficiency fall hand in hand with modern turbines. drool...... rule of thumb with efficiency - less moving parts is better.
Look familiar? Bates Model 2B airplane engine, circa 1910. Located at the new (and very cool, but no longer "free") Udvar-Hazy brach of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, near Dulles Airport in Virginia.
I'm biased on this one a bit.... still an incredible 4-cyl. And this tiny guy... A Sirio .18 engine for an rc car. The can safely peak out at something like 30k RMPs. It sounds like a mosquito and makes RC Cars go ballistic.