What role does Quantum Mechanics play in a internal combustion engine?

[obbeel]

Thermodynamics deal with quantum mechanics all the time, so I wondered what role it played in a internal combustion engine. Could we calculate it and how does it affect the engine's final output?

 

[Dale]

Internal combustion engines are classical.

Of course you can always apply QM to classical systems if you want to make a point. And a lot of the classical constitutive relations and material properties would be derived from QM in principle if not in practice

 

[berkeman]

so I wondered what role it played in a internal combustion engine.

About the only place is in the flash memory ICs in the Engine Control Unit (ECU) and other electronics (like the Entertainment Center). Can you say why flash memory ICs use QM in their operation? What part of their operation specifically?

 

[hutchphd]

I don't really understand the question. The model T certainly predates quantum theory so Henry Ford did OK.
But the world is unstable according classical theory, so there is that.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I was going to write something much like @hutchphd did. One might say that QM explains the stability of atoms, and IC engines are made of atoms, so... but I somehow don't think this is what the poster had in mind.

 

[obbeel]

I'm interested in the method that heat energy changes at an individual level. We can measure the heat output of an internal combustion engine, but how do the changes occur? I'm sure there is a chemical answer to this, but what would be the answer if we sum all individual atoms energies?

Maybe the answer would be in a statistical mechanics book, but I found it interesting how a enclosed space like an internal combustion engine can represent a change in atom energy.

 

[Nugatory]

Maybe the answer would be in a statistical mechanics book,

Yes, that is where you’ll find it. And there’s no quantum physics involved, it’s all bulk properties of matter.

This thread is closed.