Could My Heads Be Milled Or Something???

[Jeff Chambers]

Maybe what I was reaching for was adiabatic compression. What I was thinking was that there's work put into the system in compressing the volume which would increase the temperature of the volume to some extent. Would it mean much to the system? Probably not, since there's enough thermal mass in the cylinder wall, heads and pistons to probably wick that heat away pretty quickly. But in the theoretical world, it'd be easiest to consider the compression cycle as adiabatic and ignore the heat lost to the wall. Conversely, if done when the motor is warm, the heat input would probably be something to consider. Check with your professor and see whether it'd be an adiabatic, isobaric, isometric, isothermal, isentropic or polytropic process. Gawd how I hated thermo! I'd much rather deal with 'lefty loosey, righty tighty'.

Point is though that'd just be one of the many tiny little variables that all stack up in the variability.