Stephenson's Rocket & the Simple Machines Used in It

Stephenson's Rocket was a pioneering steam locomotive built in 1829.

Simple machines are machines with no internal sources of energy. They include the wheel and axle, the lever and the pulley. They can be combined to make more complex machines.

Function

• Stephenson's Rocket used a coal fire to heat water and produce steam. The pressure of the steam was used to drive the pistons. The pistons were connected to the wheels by connecting rods fixed on one side of the wheels so that as the pistons went in and out, the rods drove the wheels around.

Features

• Stephenson's Rocket is an example of a compound machine: a machine made up of a system of simple machines. The energy provided by the coal fire in the Rocket's firebox was used to make steam, the pressure of which provided the force applied to the machines in the system.

Simple Machines in Stephenson's Rocket

• The most obvious simple machine in the rocket is, of course, the wheel and axle. The piston and connecting rod system that drives the wheels is a crank, another form of simple machine. Gears are also essentially wheel-and-axle systems.