The Otto-cycle engine in a Mercedes-Benz SLK230 has a compression ratio of 8.8. (a) What is the ideal efficiency of the engine? Use g = 1.40.

Video transcript

Welcome back everybody. We are taking a look at a flagship gasoline engine. We are told that it has a compression ratio of 9.6 and a heat capacity ratio of 1.4. And we are to determine the engine's theoretical efficiency. Well, the formula for theoretical efficiency is as follows, one minus our compression ratio raised to the power of one minus our heat capacity ratio. Simple enough. So let's go ahead and plug in our numbers. We have 1 -9.6, the power of 1 -1.4, which gives us 0.595. Now we need this as a percentage. So we're going to multiply this by 100 and we get that. Our engines theoretical efficiency is 59.5% corresponding to our answer choice of E. Thank you all so much for watching. Hope this video helped. We will see you all in the next one.