STEAM ENGINE
Steam engine is any engine that is operated by the energy of expanding steam. The steam may be used to push pistons that turn the wheels of powerful locomotives. Or it may be used to spin huge turbines that drive electric generators and giant ocean liners. Large pumps, pile drivers, and many other kinds of powerful machines may also be driven by steam engines.
The development of the steam engine in the 1700's made modern industry possible. Until then, people had to depend on the power of their own muscles or on animal, wind, and water power. One steam engine could do the work of hundreds of horses. It could supply the power needed to run all the machines in a factory. A steam locomotive could haul heavy loads of freight great distances in a single day. Steamships provided safe, fast, dependable water transportation.
How steam engines work :
A steam engine does not create power. It uses steam to change the heat energy released by burning fuel into rotary or back-and-forth motion that can do work. Each steam engine has a furnace in which coal, oil, wood, or some other fuel is burned to produce heat energy. In atomic power plants, a reactor serves as the furnace, and splitting atoms produce the heat . Each steam engine also has a boiler. The heat from the fuel changes water into steam inside the boiler. The steam expands, or takes up many times the space of the original water. This energy of expansion can be used in two ways:
(1) to push a piston back and forth, or (2) to spin a turbine.
