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A reciprocating engine, also often known as a piston engine, is an engine that utilizes one or more pistons in order to convert pressure into a rotating motion.

The most common form of reciprocating engines use the burning of gasoline or diesel fuel to provide pressure. There may be one or more pistons. Each piston is located inside a cylinder, into which a fuel and air mixture is introduced, and then ignited. The now hot gases expand, pushing the piston away. The linear movement of the piston is converted to a circular movement via a connecting rod and a crankshaft. These engines are known collectively as internal-combustion engines, although internal-combustion engines do not necessarily contain pistons.

Though not often used today, steamIn physical chemistry and in engineering, steam refers to vaporized water. It is a pure, invisible gas (for mist see below), which at standard atmospheric pressure has a temperature of around 100 degrees celsius, and occupies about sixteen hundred times t is another power source for reciprocating engines, in the steam engineA steam engine is a heat engine that makes use of the potential energy that exists as pressure in steam, converting it to mechanical work. Steam engines were used in pumps, locomotive trains and steam ships, and were essential to the Industrial Revolution. In these cases high pressure steam is used to drive the piston. In most applications of steam power, the piston engine has been replaced by the more efficient turbineA turbine is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a fluid flow. The simplest turbines have one moving part, a rotor-blade assembly. Moving fluid acts on the blades to spin them and impart energy to the rotor. Early turbine examples are windmills and instead, with pistons being used in cars owing to their requirement for a high level of torqueThis article is about the physical concept. For another meaning see Torque (jewellery The concept of torque in physics, also called moment or couple originated with the work of Archimedes on levers. Informally, torque can be thought of as "rotational forc.

See also:

• Stirling engineThe Stirling engine was invented in 1816 by the Rev. Robert Stirling who sought to create a safer alternative to the steam engines of the time, whose boilers often exploded due to the high pressure of the steam and the primitive materials of the time.
• four-stroke cycleThe four-stroke cycle of an internal combustion engine is the cycle most commonly used for automotive and industrial purposes today ( cars and trucks, generators, etc). It was invented by Nikolaus Otto in 1876, and is also called the Otto cycle . The cycl
• two-stroke cycle
• Double overhead cam