Today's motor car contains thousands of parts. Trying to understand a machine with this many parts can be rather overwhelming. Remember that an automobile motor is simply a machine that creates, magnifies, and utilizes energy or power for the purpose of moving a vehicle forwards or backwards. All these thousands of parts have this purpose in common.

Continuing our analogy, a human body has hundreds of parts itself. However, if you break the body down into its basic components, it consists of organs, bones, muscles, skin, blood, nerves and so on. If you had a clear understanding of these key components, what they do and how they do it, then the complexity of the body would start to make sense.

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A mind receives information, stores information and thinks with that information to make decisions. In a car you, the driver, are the vehicle's mind, possibly aided to some degree by the instrument panel or an on-board computer. The brain in your skull is a switch-board that translates those decisions into impulses that drive and coordinate the body. In a car, this brain is you, aided by the computer if you have one. The electrical system in the car sends electrical impulses through the car rather like the nervous system sends nerve impulses around the body.

The motor has its own mouth, a set of 'lungs" and a "stomach", breathing in the air and digesting and using the "food." Various niters in the car act like the liver and kidneys in the body cleansing the machine of impurities. The engine is like the heart and keeps the life pumping into the machine. The transmission could be considered the backbone. The wheels and tires are the legs and feet.

With the car turned off and the brakes set, inspect your car inside and outside, and then open up the hood to your car. Compare what you see to the large diagram. Note which of the items in the drawing you can identify in your car. Touch the various parts of the car. With the engine off, of course!

Now turn the engine on and spend a few minutes listening to the different sounds and watching what is happening under the hood. Touch nothing under the hood while the engine is running!