ma.ttias.be
9000 RPM is faster than your screen refreshes
9000 RPM. That’s how fast a modern sports car engine can rev.
I know that number, but I can’t quite _visualize_ it. The math is simple: 9000 revolutions per minute is 150 per _second_.
The screen on my laptop doesn’t even refresh that often. 🤯
That crankshaft is spinning faster than the display you’re reading this on can draw a frame.
To help picture this, I built an animation: random.ma.ttias.be/boxermotor .
Watch the videoThe boxer-6 from the Porsche 911 GT3, running at 1/50th speed
Turn the ignition , hold the gas pedal or the spacebar, and it revs up to the redline.
There are 4 engine layouts in there: an inline-4, a 60-degree V6, a boxer-6 and a flat-plane V8. Each one gets its own crankshaft geometry and firing order. The pistons should move the way that engine moves under the hood.
Watch the videoThe flat-plane V8 rotating past head-on: two banks of four, one crankshaft down in the vee.
At full throttle the whole thing turns into a blur.
Kind of hard to even capture on video here. At 60fps the crank makes 2.5 full turns between frames, so all you capture is blur. If I could capture this at 150 fps, and hold it at full throttle, it would look like a static image, every frame capturing the same position.
So you can slow it down instead. Drop the time control to 1/50x and a single revolution crawls by, one piston at a time, giving you time to _imagine_ doing this 150 times per second.
Combustion engines are amazing pieces of tech.
Have a play with it . It’s another one in the random tools collection of PWAs , which is where all these end up.
