See-Through Cylinder Shows The Beautiful Explosions Inside An Engine In 4K Slow Motion

For a thing that's been driving the Western world for more than a century, it's amazing that we can still find new ways to see the internal combustion engine. Yet the view of a cylinder head as the explosions occur is one few of us have likely seen. It doesn't take much, just a classic four-stroke engine with one important adjustment: a see-through cylinder head so the high-speed camera can catch all the action. 

Gasoline provides the baseline of what will be an experiment looking at how a few different fuels react inside a combustion engine. 

As expected, the spark plug ignites a bright, glorious explosion inside the chamber, and it's incredible to see it in slow motion. It's beautiful, but we want to see more.

Next up, rubbing alcohol. Yes, technically an engine can run off rubbing alcohol. At least, this one did, although it seems to struggle. 

The alcohol doesn't completely vaporize and the sparkplug ignites only weak explosions. But the piston goes down all the same, and as a bonus, the alcohol removes all the soot from inside the cylinder.

Third they try acetylene. No surprise, it gives off some big, dirty, sooty booms inside the engine.

If you look closely, you can see flames escaping from the sides of the see-through head. 

Check out all the glorious explosions in the full video below!

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