How do cars go backwards?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Isn’t it cool that cars can go forwards and backwards? Backwards and forwards go can cars that cool it isn’t? All joking aside, these huge, heavy machines can switch directions with just the push of a lever! But how do they do it? We asked car expert Chaya Milchtein to help us find the answer.

Got a question that’s driving you wild? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll steer you in the right direction!

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the brains behind brains on, this is the Moment of Om.
0:20.6	Moment of Om comes to you from APM Studios.
0:26.1	I'm Eve, and I'm a race card.
0:31.6	Um.
0:36.6	That's EVE when spelled backwards and forwards.
0:41.6	That means my name is a palindrome.
0:44.5	That's just a fancy name for a word that's the same backwards or forwards.
0:48.9	Race car is a palindrome 2, C, R-A-C-R-A-C-R, or if you spell it in reverse, R-A-C-E-C-A-R.
1:01.3	Pretty wow, huh?
1:02.7	Those are two more palindromes to have on your radar.
1:06.3	Radar's a palindrome, too.
1:08.1	And just like my name, I'm a race car that can speed forwards and backwards.
1:12.7	No problem. Peep this. And now, reverse it.
1:20.3	How do I do it? Honestly, no idea. Kevin was wondering, too, how do cars go backwards?
1:26.9	Okay. Kevin was wondering, too, how do cars go backwards?
1:42.9	In order to understand how your car goes backwards, you have to start with the engine.
1:47.5	Hi, I'm Kaya Milstein, an automotive educator.
1:56.0	I teach regular people about their cars. I've never had an adult ask me this question, but I'm pretty sure most of them don't know how it actually works. So it's a great thing to learn. The engine starts
2:05.0	when you turn the car on and the engine uses the fuel in your vehicle as well as air to create
2:12.5	energy. And I'm going to compare how the car moves backwards with a bicycle.
2:20.7	You use your own energy to pedal that bike, which gets the bike moving.
2:27.2	In a car, the engine is going to burn fuel to create the energy to get the car running. So that's the engine. The engine is going to work
	...

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