9000 RPM is faster than your screen refreshes
A sports car engine at 9000 RPM spins 150 times per second—faster than your display can refresh. To make that tangible, the author built an interactive animation of four engine layouts (inline-4, V6, boxer-6, flat-plane V8) with accurate crankshaft geometry and firing orders. At full throttle, the crank blurs even at 60fps; slow it to 1/50x to watch each piston move. It's a playful tool from the author's collection of personal web apps.
That crankshaft is spinning faster than the display you’re reading this on can draw a frame.
- ssuds
In a past life I worked on a rocket engine turbopump that spun at 160,000 RPM. It’s crazy to visualize how fast that is. The stresses in the metal are so high that we needed speciality alloys made exclusively for us. The parts are literally ripping themselves apart.
- Knork-and-Fife
It is awe-inspiring to think about the metal internals of a combustion engine moving so quickly because they're so heavy and complicated.
But in some ways it's more impressive to think about a $40 Dremel 4000 that can plug into a 120v electrical socket and spin at 35000 RPM
- dpoloncsak
I'm being incredibly pedantic, but 244Hz monitors would refresh faster than the revolutions, right? Or do I misunderstand Hz
- t0mas88
The visualisation is nice to compare with different engine types as well: https://random.ma.ttias.be/boxermotor
My only complaint would be that there is no inline-6 while that does have some interesting properties in terms of balance compared to an inline-4 or V6.
- rconti
Related; I've owned a number of inline 6 cylinder motors and currently have a flat 6 (boxster). I believe the math says the I6 is smoother than the boxer 6, but my perception is that the boxer is vastly smoother. I don't know how to account for that -- maybe because of where the motor is physically located, maybe it's due to the lack of a central driveshaft, or maybe it's something else entirely.