Adventures in Tech

In the Pacific Northwest, a lot of people use their trucks as everyday commute vehicles, which makes sense, since the climate is wet, and the terrain hilly, and in wet and cold conditions people feel safer in their four wheel drive vehicles. Some of these trucks are the heavy duty ones, with big diesel engines, and lately I have noticed at work a couple idling sans driver for at least 5 minutes. It got me curious about why would you need to idle a diesel engine especially since modern gasoline engines do not require idling before driving off and putting load on the engine. A web search helped piece the answer to this puzzle. Diesels operate differently than gasoline engines. Instead of relying on spark plugs to light up the air and fuel mixture inside of the engine cylinders, diesels rely on high compression ratios that cause the air and fuel mixture inside of the cylinders to ignite.  Because of the high compression ratios, diesel engines are typically bulkier and more stu...