Hmmm…I couldn’t really tell you…until I read this great post, “suck, squeeze, bang and blow” by my new friend from Twitter! David “Genghis” Khan is a Navy Reservist who recently joined the world of blogging. If you are interested in learning about the life of a reservist (fascinating) and want to know some real interesting facts about flying like, cabin pressurization, or how jet engines work check out his site…it is worth the visit!

Here is an excerpt from his most recent post:

Suck, Squeeze, Bang and Blow

Ever wonder as you’re sitting in that window seat and looking out at the engine hanging under the wing just exactly how does it work?

I’d be willing to bet your extra bag of peanuts you scored from the flight attendant that a lot of folks don’t know exactly how it works. (most don’t even know how a car’s engine works either just that it takes gas) No problem. It can easily be explained with four simple terms that you’ll never forget.

“Suck”, “Squeeze”, “Bang” and “Blow”

No this isn’t some sort of dirty joke, but rather the simple terms used to describe the cycle of an internal combustion engine. This cycle is the same whether you’re talking about the engine in your automobile or in an airplane. There are 4 stages:

Intake (Suck) – Air is smoothed and introduced in a controlled manner

Compression (Squeeze) – The Air is compressed which increases the heat and pressure.

Combustion (Bang) – The compressed air is mixed with atomized fuel which causes the mixture to burn; the pressure and temperature both increase as does the velocity of the gases.

Exhaust (Blow) – Kinetic energy from the high energy exhaust gases push past the turbine blades which converts the kinetic energy into torque and transmitted through the internal shaft to the fan blades in the compressor in order to repeat the cycle, then the gases are purged. (in a car the force is exerted on the piston transmitting torque back to the crankshaft making it turn)

(For the rest of this post and the full explanation head over to “navyaircrew.com/blog”)