The Offshore Voyaging Reference Site

Understanding Power and Torque

My favourite class in high school was physics, and it helped that it was relatively easy for me, but when we got to learning about torque I suddenly hit a subject that I really couldn’t understand, at least if there was any motion to the parts. 

During college and grad school I finally managed to wrap my head around torque, but it wasn’t until I got my first job and had to work with it regularly that I really got it.

This two-part series is intended to help people understand power and torque and how to apply it as a sailor. 

If this subject makes your head spin like it did mine, the good news is that, unless you want to design a lot of rotating parts, we don’t absolutely need to understand torque, particularly to go voyaging, other than to use a torque wrench properly.

But at the same time, it is a somewhat frequent topic in conversations, often with incorrect use, so it warrants demystifying (Part 1) and then going through when and how to use it (Part 2).


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