Home

History

Fuel

Future Cars

Glossary

Links

Works Cited

About Us

TERMS

Alternative Fuel - A popular term for "non-conventional" transportation fuels made from natural gas (propane, compressed natural gas, methanol, etc.) or biomass materials (ethanol, methanol).

Automobile- a self-propelled passenger vehicle that usually has four wheels and an internal-combustion engine, used for land transport. Also called motorcar.

Biodiesel- a cleaner-burning diesel fuel made from natural, renewable sources such as vegetable oils.

Bio-fuel- a cleaner burning fuel that is produced from renewable resources like soybean oil. It can be used alone or blended with other petroleum products like heating oil. Bio-fuel is biodegradable, renewable, domestically produced and is readily available.

Bluetooth- how mobile phones, computers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), not to mention a broad selection of other devices, can be easily interconnected using a short-range wireless connection. Using this technology, users can have all mobile and fixed computer devices be totally coordinated.

Electic Motor - a device that takes electrical energy and converts it into mechanical energy to turn a shaft.

Emissions- A discharge or something that is given off; generally used in regard to discharges into the air. Or, releases of gases to the atmosphere from some type of human activity (cooking, driving a car, etc). In the context of global climate change, they consist of greenhouse gases (e.g., the release of carbon dioxide during fuel combustion). .

Ethenol- A colorless liquid that burns to produce water and carbon dioxide. The vapor forms an explosive mixture with air and may be used as a fuel in internal combustion engines.

Gasoline - A complex mixture of relatively volatile hydrocarbons with or without small quantities of additives, blended to form a fuel suitable for use in spark-ignition engines.

GPS- A system of satellites, computers, and receivers that is able to determine the latitude and longitude of a receiver on Earth by calculating the time difference for signals from different satellites to reach the receiver.

Hydrogen- a colorless, odorless, flammable gas that combines chemically with oxygen to form water: the lightest of the known elements

Model T.- the first Ford car

Solar- energy derived from the sun in the form of solar radiation

PIONEERS / INVENTORS

Henry Ford- first American automobile manufacturer who developed a gasoline-powered automobile (1893), founded the Ford Motor Company (1903), and mass-produced the Model T (1908-1927), the first generally affordable and widely available automobile.

Isaac Newton-  English mathematician and scientist who invented differential calculus and formulated the theory of universal gravitation, a theory about the nature of light, and three laws of motion. His treatise on gravitation, presented in Principia Mathematica (1687), was supposedly inspired by the sight of a falling apple.

Leonardo da Vinci- a famous artist that lived a few hundred years ago

Nicholas Joseph Cungnot- French inventor who is claimed by the French government to have built the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile.