01-09-2011, 12:20 AM
...but when I was having my alternator fixed the other day, I got to thinking about how a car makes its electricity. My father-in-law told me he could take the battery out of his older car and it would run fine without a battery because the car generated its own charge. This got me thinking as to what was generating the electricity! I know the raw kinetic energy outputted from a car is from the gasoline entering the engine block, then being exposed to a spark causing an explosion pushing out the pistons generating momentum, but what about the electricity? I checked online and found out, "it is possible to get electricity from the kinetic energy of a car," but nothing more... Sooo... what devise on a car turns all that kinetic energy into electricity? Any gear-heads here know? I figured it was similar to those wind-up flashlights, the two metal types grinding against each-other generating a static charge that can be temporarily held in the flashlights crappy [hand-wound] rechargeable battery. Concept would be the same for cars, but I never heard of this type of devise in a car before.
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self." -Albert Einsetin