What is torque, and what is horsepower?
First, what is torque? Torque is a twisting force on an object. If you have ever used a torque wrench, you can relate to this. The torque wrench reads how many foot-pounds of force that you are exerting on the shaft. If the handle on your wrench is one foot long, and you place one pound of pressure on the end of the wrench, you have exerted one ft-lb of torque on the shaft (just multiply the force exerted by the length of the handle). When you use a torque wrench, the shaft that you are twisting (typically a bolt or nut) is stopped when you reach the desired torque, but the torque can be applied equally as well to a rotating shaft. Envision the bolt never tightening up (oh no, did I strip it!), but with force being applied as it spins around. Torque has no sense of speed in its measure, only the amount of twisting force being applied. In the last few years, it has been common to refer to torque in pound-feet rather than foot-pounds. If that is torque, then what is horsepower? Horsepowe
