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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question.

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Speaker 1: Is it possible to use gas turbine engines in cars

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Speaker 1: or other places besides gend airplanes? Everyone has seen a

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Speaker 1: gas turbine engine. The jet engines on a commercial airliner

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Speaker 1: are gas turbans. These engines burn fuel to create a

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Speaker 1: high speed stream of exhaust. The exhaust blows against turbine

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Speaker 1: blades that cause the turbine shaft to spin. You can

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Speaker 1: do lots of different things with that spinning shaft. In helicopters,

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Speaker 1: gas turbine engines can turn the helicopter's main rotor. In

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Speaker 1: the M one tank, a horsepower gas turbine engine drives

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Speaker 1: the tracks. In a power plant, a gas turbine engine

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Speaker 1: can spin the generator. Gas turbines are a relatively efficient

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Speaker 1: way to convert a fuel and mechanical energy, and compared

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Speaker 1: to a piston engine of the same horsepower, gas turbines

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Speaker 1: are lighter, smaller, and simpler. The big problem with gas

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Speaker 1: turbine engines has been the cost, but prices are falling,

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Speaker 1: so it's fair to ask if we will be seeing

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Speaker 1: gas turbans in more and more applications. One place where

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Speaker 1: gas turbine engines are likely to appear as hybrid cars.

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Speaker 1: The gas turbine could drive a generator, and it would

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Speaker 1: be a lot smaller and lighter than a piston engine.

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Speaker 1: Small gas turbine engines have also been proposed as a

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Speaker 1: replacement for batteries. A tiny gas turbine could, in theory,

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Speaker 1: power a laptop computer. Soldiers now carry so many electronic

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Speaker 1: devices and proposed exoskeleton systems for soldiers needs so much

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Speaker 1: power that the military is considered using gas turbine engines

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Speaker 1: to provide the electricity for future soldiers. Do you have

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Speaker 1: any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please

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Speaker 1: send me an email at podcas casted how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

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Speaker 1: go to how stuff works dot com and be sure

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Speaker 1: to check out the brain stuff blog on the how

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