Thats awesome....

I think it moved.

and i thought sonograms were freaky...

What she said...

That is pretty freakin cool, if you ask me (which you didn't). I have been looking into some of the mystery of engine performance etc. and was wondering what a "flame front" would look like and how valve timing and overlap look in action. To me that is like peeking into the inner workings of the cosmos. Thanks!

shit, I blinked. what happened?

except that the video doesn't show all 4 strokes of the engine. they clip and repeat it before the piston comes up for the exhaust stroke. I guess you can infer what happens but if you're going to all the trouble to film such a thing, you might as well release the whole clip right?

It just keeps doing the same thing, over and over and over...

they need the whole clip it just doesn't look right cut up like that

What's most interesting is how the spark plug actually seems to be firing multiple times when shown at a high FPS.

Maybe they could only get a short length of footage because of the high resolution? I could even see the spark plug fire. that's freakin cool!

camera burned up upon re-entry. a lot of good men were lost.

Amazing, really.

Why does it keep glitching just after the exhaust stroke opens? I wanted to see the overlap.

Now if they could just show the inner workings of a female brain.

@GIZMODOHOMEPAGE
"Now if they could just show the inner workings of a female brain."

I was with you right up to that brain part, I was going another direction with it.

So awesome. This may be the first of its kind in history....maybe.

if they were able to measure the speed of the air or sucktion, how fast do you guys think it would be traveling.

farkin' amazing.

[quote]Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow![/quote]
Did you really just say that?! =-D
(*can't get thoughts out of his mind*)

Psssssssh. I wanna see this on a rotary engine instead!

@scoobyonline2000: Depends on the stroke and engine speed. At 6000 RPM on a Honda Accord 99mm stroke four-banger, the pistons are averaging about 65ft/s. F1 engines have much shorter strokes (about 40mm) but rev much faster (19000RPM), at which point they're averaging 83ft/s.

However, keep in mind that this is average speed, since the pistons push and pull on a crankshaft that is constantly rotating, hence they need to slow down, reverse direction, and speed up, over and over. Peak speed (which is also the speed at which the air is coming in and exhausted out) is about 1.6:1 to the average speed, or 104ft/s in our Accord or 133ft/s in the Schumacher's F1.

"The Miracle of Life." Steampunk Edition.

This is living proof what horrible system this really is for modern transport... (thank you for the footage!!!) the waste and inefficiency is tremendous! Very archaic! Shove a new body around it every 4 years and you tend to forget the middle-ages of technology inside it. 100+ years later and it's the same frickin' thing... c'mon! Aren't we done with dyno-juice... shove a camera in Tesla and see (and smell) the difference!

4 strokes are 2 strokes too many.

A lot of after burn on the valve. Leaky Valve?

It just goes to show that there not a huge ball of fire in the cylinder during ignition. I would have enjoyed seeing all four strokes but I can't complain having seen the part that really matters.

Looks like laporoscopic surgery...gone terribly, terribly wrong....on a robot.

@zarchitect: Only someone who has no understanding of modern combustion engines would call them "archaic." They are hardly primitive, nor are they an "old technology." And exactly how does a slow-motion VIDEO demonstrate the "waste and inefficiency" you are referring to? Were you counting the droplets of non-combusted fuel after the exhaust valve opened up?

I'm not saying that electric cars aren't in some ways better for the environment...but the environmental impact of Li-Ion/NiCAD/lead-acid batteries (which must be replaced every so often), the fact that the Teslas TIRES are still fossil fuel-based, and the fact that electric cars still consume electricity that was at least in part generated by fossil fuel-dependent power plants means that they are not completely carbon neutral machines either.

We can't all drive Teslas and most of us would not want to (well, everyday at least). Not practical. And besides, if electric cars were cheaper, better for the environment, more reliable, and more desireable for the general public, don't you think manufacturers would already be selling us electric cars?

Stupid Colonoscopies.

Exactly@Aaron Martin-Colby:

Pretty much the coolest thing ever

ahh, internal combustion. 100+ years and counting. :)

I think this engine-thingy is the greatest advancement mankind has ever made, except for scrolling voicemail messages on the JeebusPhone.

Humm..are you sure that's not a rectal cam after someone had some bad Mexican?

@honozooloo:
I second your motion... Electric cars are only as efficient as the plant that generate the power.

@zarchitect:
Power in the USA is about 80% fossil fuel generated from coal or gas turbines.

Did you know that if 10% of the Florida population bought plug-in electric vehicles they would collapse the electrical grid in the state?

Ah... so hybrids IS the only way to get around in a greener way... still burning fossil fuel... just like in the video above.

Interesting. Also, impressive camera... I want one.

Seems like the plug is firing a bit early. Not good.

Where's the Blow? Suck, squeeze, bang but no blow. Damn gypped again.

Wow a camera being in a heart of a engine is amazing!

i for one, dont want to believe that the dinosaurs died for nothing

fill'er up!!!!!!!!

They should have used a micro tripod.

Seems like there is a lot of combustion happening on the surfaces, rather than in the middle. Seems a might wasteful.

@aec007: Please stop spouting tired untruths. Electric motors are fundamentally more efficient than blowing shit up to make heat and a little forward motion. So no matter what the power source, they're still more efficient well-to-wheel. Don't debate me, tell us where the Tesla efficiency page is wrong.

@Colonel35:

It's actually probably more than that because any time you have a high volume plunger pulling a substance through a smaller pipe there is a leverage ratio. You can simulate the same thing in reverse with a syringe try squeezing liquid out of a syringe the liquid sprays out at a higher velocity than the rate at which you are squeezing the syringe.

@mrrobotanger:

You always fire before top dead center.

@mrrobotanger:

You always fire before top dead.

It would have been cool to see the whole thing instead of the same clip over and over.

@andrebasso:

This could be a GM car with a "waste spark." Instead of a distributor, there's a coil pack that fires two cylinders at a time. When the cylinder on combustion fires, the cylinder on exhaust also fires. I believe the main reason is then there's fewer moving parts to break/ draw power from the engine.

@MacBandit: unless you're combusting hydrogen. It would be cool to see a video from this camera inside an engine burning hydrogen.

Ahh the Tesla fanboys.. Most hyped vaporware of 2007. When did they push it back to, now? Sometime in 2008? Plenty of time to backpedal on the range figures..

Oh I know, it'll be the most amazing thing since the iPhone, sure sure.

Wake us up when real customers are really driving them..meantime, I'll be frothing over those flying cars.

Filed under: VideosI can remember years ago when my dad sat me down for the talk. "Son," he said. "When a mommy loves a daddy very much, they, uh, well, they buy a car together. Yeah. And in that car is an engine full of pistons."