party_pants said:
mollwollfumble said:
I count bicycle power as slave power, too, although some may disagree.
The invention of the modern safety bicycle post-dates the abolition of slavery in most places.
Why not just call it human muscle power?
Well, it could be any animal, on a microscopic scale it could even be a bacteria.
That takes me on to a thought about linear vs rotary. Microscopic chemical energy produces linear motion (myosin and actin acting together to make muscles contract) and also rotary motion (spinning helix of a flagella).
An electric engine can be rotary, or it can be a linear induction motor.
A clock’s motion is rotary, but a trebuchet’s motion is near-linear.
A car engine produces linear motion (piston) converted to rotary motion, then converted back to linear motion as car rolls along the road. I see no reason why an internal combustion engine couldn’t go straight from linear motion (pistons) to linear motion (car along road) using a ratchet mechanism.
… and the other way around …
A rocket engine produces linear motion, but I see no reason why it couldn’t be adapted to directly produce rotary motion (rather than external conversion from linear to rotary).
I’m still not getting near a useful alternative to internal combustion + steam/gas + electric. Unless I look more closely into Rev D’s momentum transfer and how it works without gears.
I tried a while back to design a nuclear heat engine that worked using the direct propulsion from either fission products or the momentum of thermal radiation. Neither worked particularly well.