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#62767 03/28/02 01:49 PM
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Abagogo Offline OP
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Here's one for the forum. What is the difference in meaning between these two words? Why is a jet powered with a 'jet-engine' until one of them falls off and then it becomes a motor? Why is it that when the engine in our car won't start we get out and check the motor?

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#62768 03/28/02 02:35 PM
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What is the difference in meaning between these two words?

Dunno if this'll help or not, but I've never heard an electric motor called an electric engine and I've never heard a difference engine call a difference motor.


#62769 03/28/02 02:59 PM
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Engine is a very old word, meaning a useful device. There were a variety of "siege engines" for instance.We now speak of computer "search engines."
Obviously a motor is something that produces movement.


#62770 03/29/02 12:28 AM
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Why is it that when the engine in our car won't start we get out and check the motor?

I know my car has a starter motor and a windshield wiper motor, but it also has a "CHECK ENGINE" light. And in my Webster's, no snickering from the crowd among the various definitions of each, I find:

engine n. 1. A machine that uses energy, esp. energy from a fuel, to perform work.

motor n. 1. A machine that converts electric energy into mechanical power. 2. An internal-combustion engine.

Are the first definitions the same or different here?


#62771 04/01/02 12:21 AM
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Abagogo:

I learned from somewhere many years ago that an engine used a fuel internally to produce work, while a motor took the energy from a fuel source at a distant location and produced work with it.

Internal combustion engine, steam engine, but electric motor. The fuel comsumed by the motor might have been combusted or fissioned (I suspect I am gonna hear about verbing a noun on this, but if something is fissionable it ought to fission!) many miles away.

I note that a steam engine is technically not an internal combustion engine, but the combustion generally occurs very close to the mechanical parts for the purposes of efficiency.

TEd



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#62772 04/01/02 02:36 AM
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TEd has basically got it. They way it was explained to me by my father, who was a railroader, was that an engine carries with it its own fuel, whereas a motor is powered by an outside energy source to which it has to be connected. Hence, on the old Pennsylvania Railroad, they had steam and diesel engines which pulled trains, but the big locomotives which were mostly used for passenger trains and which ran by connecting to the electric lines over the track were called "motors" in official railroad parlance. The big black ones which ran out of Penn Station in NYC were the GG1 model. The power pickup, which looked sort of like a folding laundry drying rack, which made contact with the overhead power lines, was called a 'pantograph'. Good word for your collection of oddities.

Incidentally, a diesel locomotive does not directly drive itself by the diesel engine. The diesel engine is actually a large generator which provides power to the electric traction motors which drive each set of wheels. Thus you have both types of device in one large machine.


#62773 04/01/02 02:48 AM
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#62774 04/01/02 12:55 PM
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I reckon it would've been bloody confusing growing up in New Zealand.

frunstance: While watching cowdy movies - didn't you get confused when somebody mentioned engines and indians in the one sentence?

stells


#62775 04/01/02 01:31 PM
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I learned from somewhere many years ago that an engine used a fuel internally to produce work, while a motor took the energy from a fuel source at a distant location and produced work with it.

This would be great if the internal combustion engine in your car weren't also referred to as a motor.

If it works in practice but not in theory, something must be wrong with the practice


#62776 04/01/02 01:48 PM
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Just to prove I once studied new math, motors are a subset of engines.


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