Originally Posted by toast
No. I understand. You guys need to understand the real physics definitions of force, work, acceleration, and velocity.
On top of that you are all leaving out the most important part of the equation, RPM. A car with 100hp and 100ft-lb of torque makes max power at 5252 RPM. A car with 100hp and 200ft-lb of torque makes max power at 2626 RPM. Since the engine has twice the room to rev, it will be able to utilize twice the gearing and they will be both accelerate at the same rate for the same period of time, thus, they will tie.
your missing some info and have a few things crossed up. Saying that a car with 100 hp and 100 ft lbs makes max power at 5252 isnt right. How in the world can you make that inference? Now if you say the car makes 100 hp AND 100 ft lbs at the exact same time and both are peaks..then yes...it will be at 5252 rpm. Not many cars will make both peak HP AND peak Tq at the cross point of 5252. As a matter of fact I have never seen one. Usually peak Tq is made substantially lower in rpm than peak HP. In other words...just saying the cars HP peaks at 100 and the Tq peaks at 100 is pretty useless to make any prediction on how the car may accelerate. You really need to know what the entire Tq curve (and HP curve) through the RPMs looks like.
Even if we look at yout theoretical engine where we say it makes those peak #s at THE SAME TIME...you still cannot tell which one would be faster. Maybe the one that makes 100ft/lbs at 5252 rpm also makes 95 ft/lbs all the way out to 7500 rpm....and then is geared accordingly. And the other engine drops off drastically just after 2700 rpms. Looking at peak #s alone will never tell you anything. Do yourself a favor and go read the link posted.
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