English Technical Reading Assignment 3

8/17/2019 English Technical Reading Assignment 3

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FV11A2201 - Technical English Reading Course

Ville Mälimäki

Assignment 3

31 January 2016

Pham Thi Hong Van - 0440171


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ASSIGNMENT 2 - American inventor unveils multi-fuel engine

Bold text - keywords

Underline text - quotation marks

Blue tex - attitude wordsRead the title

● American inventor unveils multi-fuel engine

Read the 1. paragraph

● Jerome Murray , the prolific 78-year old inventor of such wonders as the

peristaltic pump, the electric carving knife and the movable covered walkway

to convey passengers to aircraft without exposing them to the elements, has

now come up with an entirely new form of internal-combustion engine .

His "Rotorcam" engine has no camshaft, flywheel, distributor or water pump

and can run on virtually any type of fuel : petrol, diesel, kerosene, propane,

jet fuel or a mixture of any of them.

Read the 1. sentences of the rest of the paragraphs

● The 4-cylinder, 4-stroke engine, which has been evolving for 15 years, would

also be lighter, more compact, and cheaper to manufacture than present

internal-combustion engines, because it has many fewer parts .

● The Rotorcam is of rotary design.

● The engines cylinders radiate outwards from a central axle like the spokes

of a wheel, with the heads of the cylinders pointing inwards .

● As they rotate, a large port in each cylinder successively passes apertures

through which fuel enters and exhaust gases exit.

● Murray believes his engine will be inherently less polluting than other

engines.

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● Only one sparking plug is needed , which each cylinder rotates around to use

in turn, thus eliminating the need for a distributor.

● The Rotorcam does not require periodic tune-ups, it just needs its oil and oil

filter replaced every 5000 miles or so.

● The prototype Rotorcam is only 25 centimeters thick and less than a meter in

diameter.

● Besides its rotary design, the Rotorcam also differs markedly from

conventional engines in its ability to change compression ratio

automatically , depending on what fuel it is ingesting.

● In the Rotorcam a tiny microphone senses the "knocking" caused when the

fuel-air mixture is compressed too much and ignites before the sparking plug

fires.

● So far a very modest $1 million has been expended on development of the

Rotorcam engine, the last $750 000 coming from a sale of shares.

● Murray foresees the initial applications of the Rotorcam being light aircraft, lawnmowers, stationary engines and military vehicles.

● Convincing carmakers to license his invention, for which patents have been

applied, will be much tougher.

Fonts may differ: the same throughout the text

Read the last paragraph

● Convincing carmakers to license his invention, for which patents have been

applied, will be much tougher . However , Murray claims that in Detroit ,

which is the heartland of the US´s automobile empire, hostility to innovations

from outside is weakening, and manufacturers are much more open to new

concepts.

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Summary

Jerome Murray - a prolific American inventor of many creations - introduces an

entirely new form of internal-combustion engine named “Rotorcam” which can use

any type of fuel. Rotorcam has many fewer parts than conventional engines thus is

lighter, more compact, and cheaper to produce. Its rotary design includes

outward-radiate cylinders which have large ports to pass apertures for fuel and exit

gases as they rotate. The inventor claims its engine is inherently less polluting than

and does not require periodic tune-ups as others. Rotorcam has only one sparking

plug which is rotated around sequentially by the cylinders, hence does not need a

distributor. The engine’s prototype is relatively small in thickness and diameter. It has

special ability to adapt compression ratio to digested fuel automatically; a tiny

microphone sensor ignites when the fuel-air mixture is over-compressed. Only $1

million has been invested on Rotorcam development, 75% of which was generated

from sales of shares. Rotorcam could be applied in light aircraft, lawnmowers,

stationary engine and military vehicles; however selling license of this

patent-pending invention to carmakers is much more challenging.

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English Technical Reading Assignment 3