Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
From the brains behind Brains On, this is the Moment of Um. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Eve, and I'm a race car. Um...
See?
R-A-C-E-C-A-R. Or if you spell it in reverse, R-A-C-E-C-A-R. Pretty wow, huh? Those are two more palindromes to have on your radar. Radar's a palindrome too. And just like my name, I'm a race car that can speed forwards and backwards. No problem. Peep this. And now reverse it.
How do I do it? Honestly, no idea. Kevin was wondering too, how do cars go backwards? In order to understand how your car goes backwards, you have to start with the engine.
Hi, I'm Kaya Milchten, an automotive educator. I teach regular people about their cars. I've never had an adult ask me this question, but I'm pretty sure most of them don't know how it actually works. So it's a great thing to learn. The engine starts when you turn the car on and the engine uses the fuel in your vehicle as well as air to create energy.
And I'm going to compare how the car moves backwards with a bicycle. You use your own energy to pedal that bike, which gets the bike moving. In a car, the engine is going to burn fuel to create the energy to get the car running.
So that's the engine. The engine is going to work with the transmission. The transmission is going to control what the car does with that energy, almost like a control center. And in that engine, there are many different gears. Those gears control how fast your car goes and in what direction your car goes.
On your bike, if you have multiple gears, like you have a little bit more of an advanced bike, you can see where the chain will switch from one gear to the next when you select it on the handlebar. With your car, it is going to typically adjust itself between gears as you need to go faster or slower if your car has an automatic transmission, which is the most common transmission on vehicles in the United States.
But while you don't typically pedal your bike backwards, the transmission has gears that you can engage to help your car go forwards or go backwards. These gears are kind of like wheels that all fit together. They have teeth in them in a way, and they fit together sort of like the chain and the sprockets that are on your bike that you switch back and forth between. The forward gears make the wheels go forward, just like you'd pedal your bike
and you turn those gears with your pedals and your bike is going to go forward. But with your car, you're going to need to go backwards too. When you shift your car into reverse using the gear shifter, right?
You're telling the transmission, hey, I don't want to go forward anymore. I need to go backwards instead. You're going to switch the gear from going forward, from drive to R to reverse. And that's going to switch the gears and let your car go backwards instead. Um, uh.
Aha! So there are all different parts inside of me that work together and help me zoom around the racetrack. I've got an engine that works with another special part called the transmission. The transmission takes energy from the engine and controls what I do. It has little gears that look kind of like circles with teeth on them.
Those gears inside of the transmission control whether I go forwards or backwards. So when the driver moves the lever to the R position, it shifts the car into reverse so I can go backwards. Pretty neat, huh? And hey, did you know that two guys in the 1980s once drove their car in reverse for almost 10,000 miles? They still hold the world record for longest drive in reverse.
You know, I bet I could break that record. Watch me go. If you like this episode, take a second to subscribe to Moment of Um, wherever you listen to podcasts.
And if you want to learn all about the history of cars powered by electricity, check out the Forever Ago podcast, where we have a whole episode all about them. Want to see our shows come to life? Head over to YouTube, where we've got awesome animated Brains On episodes. Just search Brains On Universe on YouTube and subscribe.
If you have a question, we'd love to help you answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact. See you next time and the next day and every weekday. Until then, uh... A Toyota! That's another palindrome.