Lego jet engine
A moving replica of a jet engine has been made out of thousands of Lego bricks.
Rolls Royce paid professional Lego builders to build a half-size replica of one of their jet engines because the company hopes it will show young people how exciting a career in engineering can be.
The inspiration for the model came from a five-year-old boy. He built a little engine out of Lego with his father and sent it to Rolls Royce. That gave Rolls Royce the idea to build a much bigger version.
The Lego version is more than 6ft 6in (2m) long. More than 160 separate engine components were built using 152,455 Lego bricks, then joined together to replicate a real jet engine. It has everything from the large fan blades which suck air into the engine down to the combustion chambers where fuel is burned.
It took four people eight weeks to complete.
Rolls Royce paid professional Lego builders to build a half-size replica of one of their jet engines because the company hopes it will show young people how exciting a career in engineering can be.
The inspiration for the model came from a five-year-old boy. He built a little engine out of Lego with his father and sent it to Rolls Royce. That gave Rolls Royce the idea to build a much bigger version.
The Lego version is more than 6ft 6in (2m) long. More than 160 separate engine components were built using 152,455 Lego bricks, then joined together to replicate a real jet engine. It has everything from the large fan blades which suck air into the engine down to the combustion chambers where fuel is burned.
It took four people eight weeks to complete.
The jet engine is a replica of the Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engine, which Boeing uses for its 787 Dreamliners.
Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 facts
Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 facts
- The front fan is over 9 ft feet across and sucks in up to 1.25 tonnes of air every second at take-off.
- Turbine blades inside the engine rotate at over 12,000 revolutions per minute, with their tips reaching 1,200 mph – almost twice the speed of sound.
- At take-off, each of the Trent 1000's 66 turbine blades generates the same power as produced by a Formula One racing car. That is 800 horse power per blade.
- Temperatures inside the hottest parts of the engine are 2000C - around half as hot as the surface of the sun.
- At full power air leaves the nozzle at the back of the engine travelling at almost 900 mph.
- It squeezes air into a space 50 times smaller than its original volume.