Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com where smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question. Is it possible to use gas turbine engines in cars or other places besides gend airplanes? Everyone has seen a gas turbine engine. The jet engines on a commercial airliner are gas turbans. These engines burn fuel to create a high speed stream of exhaust. The exhaust blows against turbine blades that cause the turbine shaft to spin. You can
do lots of different things with that spinning shaft. In helicopters, gas turbine engines can turn the helicopter's main rotor. In the M one tank, a horsepower gas turbine engine drives the tracks. In a power plant, a gas turbine engine can spin the generator. Gas turbines are a relatively efficient way to convert a fuel and mechanical energy, and compared to a piston engine of the same horsepower, gas turbines
are lighter, smaller, and simpler. The big problem with gas turbine engines has been the cost, but prices are falling, so it's fair to ask if we will be seeing gas turbans in more and more applications. One place where gas turbine engines are likely to appear as hybrid cars. The gas turbine could drive a generator, and it would be a lot smaller and lighter than a piston engine. Small gas turbine engines have also been proposed as a replacement for batteries. A tiny gas turbine could, in theory,
power a laptop computer. Soldiers now carry so many electronic devices and proposed exoskeleton systems for soldiers needs so much power that the military is considered using gas turbine engines to provide the electricity for future soldiers. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcas casted how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain stuff blog on the how stuff works dot com home page