Strangely Satisfying Demonstration Shows How Car Thermostats Work

If you take a look at the cooling system that your vehicle uses under the hood in order to make sure that everything is working properly, there are several key pieces that make sure that your operating temperature is exactly where it needs to be.

You see, every engine has an ideal temperature range that it should be operating within in order to run at peak performance. Any warmer or, believe it or not, cooler, and the engine won’t exactly be at its peak, causing less efficiency and more wear and tear to unfold as you roll down the road.

With all of the aforementioned factors, a device like a thermostat can help keep the engine right in that perfect range. You see, basically the thermostat knows when the engine gets too hot and, at that point in time, it will open in order to allow more coolant into the engine. Once the coolant starts to flow, the temperature will be brought back down to a reasonable range as the thermostat might close a little bit to stop the flow. How does it all work, though? As a mechanical system, you might find it tough to wrap your head around how it knows when to open and close. After all, it’s not controlled by a computer that’s reading temperatures off to it.

Instead, the concept is basically spring driven and will modulate when the temperature gets too high or low, opening up a valve that will allow the flow continue. The video below gives us a nice visual representation of how exactly something like this works out. It’s the small parts like this that can really make an engine function at peak performance and you have to be able to appreciate all this technology, while incredibly simple, as it comes together to carry out a very important task.