OT - Way OT - Motor Oil vs Engine Oil

valenciapoultry · Jan 1, 2009

We've been having a rather lively discussion and I hope you guy/gals can help.

Motors are externally powered e.g. electric motors powered by AC/DC. Engines are internally powered e.g. gasoline engines. So our cars (semantically speaking) are powered by engines not motors.

So why do we put motor oil in our engines?

I've spent too much time on google looking for the answer, I was hoping someone on the forum might know the answer.

Thanks for your help.

Happy New Year

DanLins · Jan 2, 2009

Motor Oil

I think the use of 'motor oil' may have derived from the early days of the automobile. A hundred years ago, folks were beginning to 'motor' around, and never gave a thought to the distinction you've raised.

Motor Hotels became Motels, and motoring became a fad by the 'teens and roaring twenties.

Engine would not have worked in those cases. Just my thoughts, but I'm sure someone has researched this better than I have.

Dan

CarlBoyd · Jan 2, 2009

You have way too much time on your hands!

Go turn/mill/grind/plane/shape something. Life is to short to worry about something like that.

Happy New Year.

CarlBoyd

Tony Quiring · Jan 2, 2009

another goofy OT question that goes here...So why do we park in the driveway and drive on the parkway?

Never mind...

gbent · Jan 2, 2009

So General Motors should be called General Engines, and General Electric should be called General Motors?

Our language abounds with such imperfections in general usage. Those who are in the trade will use the terms properly.

Ask a machinist for a ruler and they may offer the Queen of England. However, to the rest of the population, a measuring stick will be offered.

Timw · Jan 2, 2009

Boats have outboard motors!! ?????

Keelan · Jan 2, 2009

"Motor" is the larger category, with "Engine" as a subclass thereof.

Airborne · Jan 2, 2009

I like popping wheelies on my enginecycle.

carla · Jan 2, 2009

And........almost all 'engine lathes' are powered by electric motors.

(there are, of course, a small number of rare exceptions, driven from lines of shafting powered by a steam or oil engine)

cheers

Carla

Dave W · Jan 2, 2009

Dictionaries tend to lag behind common usage; my American Heritage dictionary says an engine is a "destructive device" and goes off talking about seige engines. It also mentioned a lathe as an example of an engine; I forget the reasoning there now.

As far as motor vs. engine, you'd think the people who make them might know:

Ford Motor Company
General Motors
Bayarische Motoren Werke

etc.

Mainer · Jan 2, 2009

My understanding is that, using correct engineering terminology, there are electric MOTORS and heat ENGINES. Engines are devices that convert heat to mechanical motion.

In the great unwashed realm of common usage, the term "motor" sometimes gets applied to an engine...as in "the motor of a car," but strictly speaking that's incorrect.

gbent · Jan 2, 2009

A motor uses potential energy to create kinetic energy. That energy may be electricty, steam, vacuum, water head, compressed air, and etc.

An engine uses a chemical or atomic process to produce energy from a fuel source.

As for the car companies, your car has many motors (starter, windshield wiper, power seat, heater, and etc.), but probably only one engine.

As for the engine lathe, a previous thread here concluded the engine portion came from the geared thread cutting lead screw rather than the power source (as I had previously assumed).

Damien W · Jan 2, 2009

There is an interesting thread in the historical forum talking about how you came to call a centre lathe an engine lathe.

I know that this doesn't entirely answer the question but this question has been raised before and many enlightening thoughts have been offered in the past.

Forgetting the inappropriate/incorrect uses mentioned above the original poster is seeking a definition of an engine and a definition of a motor.

Some one mentioned a seige engine which can also be called a war engine. I believe that the term was developed to describe a collection of ropes and pulleys and winches which gave the machine the potential
To break down or overcome defences.

As I might have said in other similar threads, an engine is a device that applies mechancal or physics principles to achieve a conversion/advantage.

When I think of an engine, as in an internal combustion engine, as compared to an electric motor I differentiate the two by the fact that an internal combustion engine comsumes energy just to maintain its operation without actually producing any work. Additional energy must be consumed or converted to get any work output.

At best an internal combustion engine is said to be about 30 to 50 percent efficient whereas an electric motor is more likely to be about 80 percent efficient.

doug8cat · Jan 2, 2009

Guess that is why my check motor light never comes on

Langanobob · Jan 2, 2009

At best an internal combustion engine is said to be about 30 to 50 percent efficient whereas an electric motor is more likely to be about 80 percent efficient.

Yeah, but...the electricity itself was generated at a power plant with maybe 50% efficiency.

Found that info using Google, my favorite search engine.

bruto · Jan 2, 2009

One could go back into the etymology and the less common meanings, and find that an engine was a mechanical device, especially a complex one, and sometimes even just a very clever idea, (same root as "ingenuity") long before internal combustion, and that a motor is something that imparts motion, whether mechanical or biological. The distinction that calls certain devices engines but not motors appears to be a matter of usage dating from the development of steam engines, but one could avoid a lot of silliness by acknowledging that, as is so common in English, the words simply overlap.

Ox · Jan 2, 2009

valenciapoultry said:
We've been having a rather lively discussion and I hope you guy/gals can help.

Motors are externally powered e.g. electric motors powered by AC/DC. Engines are internally powered e.g. gasoline engines. So our cars (semantically speaking) are powered by engines not motors.

So why do we put motor oil in our engines?

I've spent too much time on google looking for the answer, I was hoping someone on the forum might know the answer.

Thanks for your help.

Happy New Year

[Haven't read the other reponces]

Back in the mid '80's it was put out there in Hot Rod Magazine that they plan to call an engine an engine when (some famouse drag racer who I didn't recognize even then) quits saying "We blew the motor".

I have put engine oil in my motors before - just to counter act your issue.

--------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

CharlieBiler · Jan 2, 2009

valenciapoultry,
Just remember that motor oil can go in a motor or an engine. Engine oil never goes in, or on, a motor.

A motor is something that provides power. You can have a drill motor, car motor, or even a rocket motor. An engine is a complicated device that transfers energy from one state to another, to do work.

A siege engine is considered a moderately complicated device for transforming energy, to do work. An electric motor is considered a simple device, relatively speaking. The man that taught me that has been gone to the ages for longer than I care to remember. He read it to us from a copy of a machinists handbook that explained things like why zero degrees Fahrenheit is thirty-two degrees below the freezing point of water and one hundred degrees is where it is. Today most 'edjumakated' persons can not answer such trivial questions. To him I was a fool because I could not speak Latin. He was right. I am a fool. I get dumber every day.

Learned persons once scoffed about how metric was a crutch for simple minds and Celsius was a backward hodgepodge temperature system that had to be re engineered to be useful.

Today most persons can not distinguish between 'SB' and the rest of the 'S' series of oils. The 'C' series of oils is totally beyond them. Have you ever seen a 'Machinist' dump 'C' series oil into a lathe or mill and not even know how much damage they have done? Why worry about the terms engine and lathe when most can not even describe either?

Time for another drink.............................................................

Timcasbolt · Jan 2, 2009

Ox said:
[Haven't read the other reponces]

Back in the mid '80's it was put out there in Hot Rod Magazine that they plan to call an engine an engine when (some famouse drag racer who I didn't recognize even then) quits saying "We blew the motor".

That was Warren Johnson.

Newman109 · Jan 2, 2009

valenciapoultry said:
We've been having a rather lively discussion and I hope you guy/gals can help.

Motors are externally powered e.g. electric motors powered by AC/DC. Engines are internally powered e.g. gasoline engines. So our cars (semantically speaking) are powered by engines not motors.

So why do we put motor oil in our engines?

I've spent too much time on google looking for the answer, I was hoping someone on the forum might know the answer.

Thanks for your help.

Happy New Year

Of course you are technically correct but the idiomatic use of language is not regulated by technicalities. I know lots and lots of people who refer to a Chevrolet V-8 as a "motor". So far, I've not heard anyone call an electric motor an "engine" although I'm sure that someone eventually will and some probably already have started to do so, out of earshot, of course.

The term "motor" has been in use for referring to a car's power unit for more than 100 years now. It is rooted in the colloquial language from the time that a motor was what you had in your new Ford Runabout. So if you had a motor in your car, it made sense to put motor oil in your engine. Oh sorry, now I'm getting confused. Well, you get the idea.

I think all of the people on this site will use "engine" for gas-powered internal combustion device and "motor" for electrically-powered unit. Has this been a problem for you?

OT - Way OT - Motor Oil vs Engine Oil

Plastic

Plastic

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Stainless

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Stainless

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Aluminum

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Aluminum

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