Balloons Help You Visualize How Engines Create Airflow

For Our Next Engineering Lesson, It’s Time to Break out the Balloons!

The automotive enthusiast community is a very funny place. Writers, mechanics, racers, and engineers all are wondering the same questions about what makes cars go. But we require different methods of explanation. The video above offers quite the illustrative method, brought to us by an engineer to help explain all the math that we cannot.

We often hear about how much air is required to keep cars cool these days. In the video above, Jason Fenske, host of Engineering Explained, finds a simple way to demonstrate airflow through engines. He attaches two massive balloons to both the rear exhausts of his Honda S2000. Even at idle, you can clearly see inflation of the balloons taking place, showing just how much air is constantly moving through the powertrain.

CHECK OUT: What Forum Members Are Saying About This Unique Teaching Aid

To break things down further, Fenske does some not-so-obvious math to explain that at redline, his S2000 — which revs to a glorious 9,000 RPM — would consume 9-cubic-meters of air per minute. So in his 108-cubic-foot garage, all of the available air would be gone in 12 minutes. Damn.

Check it out for yourself and see how Jason breaks it down in a very digestible manner. Math nerds can be car enthusiasts, too!