An engine made of water
EVERY so often someone tries to design a new internal-combustion engine. Few make it from the laboratory bench to the big bad world. The last serious attempt, Felix Wankel's rotary engine, lingers on in Mazda's sports cars and is also used to power snowmobiles. But it suffers from a fatal flaw, which is that the tips of the rotating piston on which the device relies tend to become worn. What if—do not laugh—the piston were made of water?
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “An engine made of water”
From the April 5th 1997 edition
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