Gear

We just learned about the Motor or engine that makes things move.

One very important part of most engines is the Gear.

Gears are wheels that have teeth on the end, and usually a hole in the middle.
The teeth on the end can match up with other gears that also have teeth.
So when one gear moves, it also turns the other gear.

If there is a big wide gear that is moving very slow, it can be hooked to a small gear that will spin very fast.
Or it can be hooked to a gear that is sideways, to change the direction of the movement.

Gears are in everything from car motors to clocks to bicycles.
Pretty much everything with moving parts uses at least one gear to help control the movement made by the energy!

The teeth on gears are called "cogs", and gears are sometimes called cogwheels.
Sometimes people will even refer to themselves as a "cog in the machine" meaning that they are just one part of a bigger machine that makes things work.



(from: wikipedia - gear)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Rockets - Star Tracker

Motor

We just started learning about Machines.

One of the most important things about a machine is the Motor, also sometimes called the engine.

The motor is the thing that takes some type of energy and turns it into movement.
Like a car's engine takes in gas, and then the engine burns the gas to turn it into movement that makes the car go.

Electrical motors can take electricity from a plug or a battery and use that to move something like a toy or a fan.

There are even types of motors that use steam, air, liquids or coils like toys that you wind up and they walk around.

Anything that takes in energy and then makes something move is a motor.
Really you can even think of our human bodies like engines that take in food and make our muscles move!


(from: wikipedia - steam engine)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Accelerometer

Machines

We've learned a lot about the science of forensics that detectives use to solve crimes.

Another type of science is the study of Machines, which are the things that make the world move.

This could be anything from a car that is driving down the street to a windmill that takes wind power and turns it into energy.

There are many types of machines in the world, and there are lots of jobs for people who work with machines.
One type of job for working with machines is a mechanical engineer.

These people help figure out how to build machines and how to use them to build the things we need in our lives.

Another types of job is a machine operator, like the people who use the machine to do work.
This could be someone driving a big bulldozer, or someone working in a big building using a machine to cut or lift things.

Sometimes our machines break down and we need people to fix them.
There are lots of people working those jobs too, like a mechanic that looks at a car when it isn't working any more and has to figure out how to get it running again.

There are so many machines in our world that we need a lot of smart people to help make them work!


(from: wikipedia - mechanical engineering)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Altimeter