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heat engine

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system that performs the conversion of heat or thermal energy to mechanical work

AI overview

A heat engine is a machine that converts heat energy into mechanical work that can be used to power things like cars and power plants. It matters because it allows us to harness thermal energy from sources like burning fuel and transform it into useful motion and power.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

~22 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Figure 1: Heat engine diagram

System properties

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “heat engine” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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