Relating horspower and torque to real life

Much of what I've accomplished in my life has been in the way of analogies. See, I have developed something of an ability to explain computers in ways that people understand.

If I'm talking to a car guy I tell it like it's a car. See, this is your motherboard. It is like the frame of the vehicle. The case is like the body. Everything plugs into the frame, right, so that's the motherboard and we'll put our engine on that. Cpu is the motor, blah blah blah.

I just try to figure out some system the user understands and relate computering to that. Anyway, it makes sense to the person and they often thank me for the insight and its nice.

So today I came up with the solution to a problem.

Here's the problem:
How do you explain the difference in horsepower and torque to someone who isn't a gearhead? Well I came up with a workable solution. Sure, it isn't entirely accurate, but it seems to be a good way to get the overall point across in a manner most will understand.

Here's the solution:
The difference between horsepower and torque for Everyman:

First of all forget about horsepower and torque, we're not going to start with those. Let's think of your favorite bicycle. I've had a bunch and I would have to say all of us have ridden down a hill. Well let's do that. Imagine yourself on this bike and you are riding down a hill. It's a hot day and there isn't much breeze so you pick up the pace to get some of the wind whipping through your helmet (you ARE wearing your helmet, aren't you?!) The wind feels good so you pick up the pace a bit more to get more of a good thing and then get drunk with pleasure and are pumping full speed down this hill with the wind whipping your hair and bugs in your teeth and freedom in your soul. This is horsepower.

Now, you've made it to the bottom of the hill, had a nice little dip in the stream in the valley and you're all hydrated and ready to head back up. I'm afraid the imagery isn't as poetic this time around. Your muscles ache, you grind the pedals in a circular rotation and the hill is as such that you are easily able to count the rotations to keep your mind off the fact that your upper thigh is burning like a rash you had back in college, you're sweating like something from another world, and you generally just hate having to trudge back up the hill. This is torque.

You use a little bit of each (horsepower / torque ) depending on your terrain and load. The numbers you see shown on websites and literature are their peak numbers. Actual performance in either a real engine or a person would be a gradual graph of values up to their peak and then falling off again. These numbers are not, of course, meaningless. But you can take it on face value that if you want more get up and go right off the bat without revving all the way up you'll want something with torque in the low end. This means you want your torque numbers to be high at low revolutions of the engine. This is what tugs you up the hill on your bike, your pedaling the crank is the torque.


Anyway, it makes sense to me. :P