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 Originally Posted by CoccoBill
I guess I more meant that the effects of applied torque can be unintuitive, not the force itself. Hm so in car specs, torque is the rotational force applied to the crankshaft, and horsepower is the amount of work, or transfer of energy, the engine can do in a set time?
You gotta be careful with what the torque is referring to. The torque going into the transmission is not, in general, the same as the torque coming out of the transmission. A differential is a kind of gearbox, too, so it also changes torque from its input to output shafts, in general.
Torque coming out of the engine is not generally the same as torque coming out of the transmission, which is not generally the same as the torque applied to the wheels.
The power delivered in all cases is (nearly) the same, because of conservation of energy (but not exactly the same, 'cause friction and stuff).
Your definition of work is spot on.
Since energy is conserved in every split second, power is conserved, too. So the power into the transmission is roughly equal to the power coming out of the transmission.
Roughly equal because friction losses mean that the output of the transmission really includes heat and noise and other forms of dissipating energy.
This is true for all gearboxes.
A slowly spinning shaft with a high rotational force can be put through a gearbox to produce a faster spinning shaft capable of delivering less rotational force.
Also, the opposite is true. Gears are efficient tools for trading rotational force for rotational speed and back.
So the horsepower rating of the engine tells you how much constant brute force the engine is capable of producing.
The torque is a variable thing, depending on where you measure it.
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