Simple machines can be regarded as the elementary "building blocks" of which all more complicated

machines (sometimes called "compound machines"[6][7]) are composed.[2][8] For example, wheels,
levers, and pulleys are all used in the mechanism of a bicycle.[9][10] The mechanical advantage of a
compound machine iA screw is a mechanism that converts rotational motion to linear motion, and a
torque (rotational force) to a linear force.[1] It is one of the six classical simple machines. The most
common form consists of a cylindrical shaft with helical grooves or ridges called threads around the
outside.[2][3] The screw passes through a hole in another object or medium, with threads on the
inside of the hole that mesh with the screw's threads. When the shaft of the screw is rotated relative
to the stationary threads, the screw moves along its axis relative to the medium surrounding it; for
example rotating a wood screw forces it into wood. In screw mechanisms, either the screw shaft can
rotate through a threaded hole in a stationary object, or a threaded collar such as a nut can rotate
around a stationary screw shaft.[4][5] Geometrically, a screw can be viewed as a narrow inclined
plane wrapped around a cylinder.[1]

Like the other simple machines a screw can amplify force; a small rotational force (torque) on the
shaft can exert a large axial force on a load. The smaller the pitch (the distance between the screw's
threads), the greater the mechanical advantage (the ratio of output to input force). Screws are widely
used in threaded fasteners to hold objects together, and in devices such as screw tops for containers,
vises, screw jacks and screw presses.

Other mechanisms that use the same principle, also called screws, don't necessarily have a shaft or
threads. For example, a corkscrew is a helix-shaped rod with a sharp point, and an Archimedes' screw
is a water pump that uses a rotating helical chamber to move water uphill. The common principle of
all screws is that a rotating helix can cause linear motion.s just the product of the mechanical
advantages of the simple machines of which it is composed.

Although they continue to be of great importance in mechanics and applied science, modern
mechanics has moved beyond the view of the simple machines as the ultimate building blocks of
which all machines are composed, which arose in the Renaissance as a neoclassical amplification of
ancient Greek texts. The great variety and sophistication of modern machine linkages, which arose
during the Industrial Revolution, is inadequately described by these six simple categories. Various
post-Renaissance authors have compiled expanded lists of "simple machines", often using terms like
basic machines,[9] compound machines,[6] or machine elements to distinguish them from the
classical simple machines above. By the late 1800s, Franz Reuleaux[11] had identified hundreds of
machine elements, calling them simple machines.[12] Modern machine theory analyzes machines as
kinematic chains composed of elementary linkages called kinematic pairs.
In modern usage, the term engine typically describes devices, like steam engines and internal
combustion engines, that burn or otherwise consume fuel to perform mechanical work by exerting a
torque or linear force (usually in the form of thrust). Devices converting heat energy into motion are
commonly referred to simply as engines.[4] Examples of engines which exert a torque include the
familiar automobile gasoline and diesel engines, as well as turboshafts. Examples of engines which
produce thrust include turbofans and rockets.

When the internal combustion engine was invented, the term motor was initially used to distinguish it
from the steam engine—which was in wide use at the time, powering locomotives and other vehicles
such as steam rollers. The term motor derives from the Latin verb moto which means 'to set in
motion', or 'maintain motion'. Thus a motor is a device that imparts motion.

Motor and engine are interchangeable in standard English.[5] In some engineering jargons, the two
words have different meanings, in which engine is a device that burns or otherwise consumes fuel,
changing its chemical composition, and a motor is a device driven by electricity, air, or hydraulic
pressure, which does not change the chemical composition of its energy source.[6][7] However,
rocketry uses the term rocket motor, even though they consume fuel.

A heat engine may also serve as a prime mover—a component that transforms the flow or changes in
pressure of a fluid into mechanical energy.[8] An automobile powered by an internal combustion
engine may make use of various motors and pumps, but ultimately all such devices derive their power
from the engine. Another way of looking at it is that a motor receives power from an external source,
and then converts it into mechanical energy, while an engine creates power from pressure (derived
directly from the explosive force of combustion or other chemical reaction, or secondarily from the
action of some such force on other substances such as air, water, or steam).[9]
Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as
exploited in hydroelectric power generation), heat energy (e.g. geothermal), chemical energy, electric
potential and nuclear energy (from nuclear fission or nuclear fusion). Many of these processes
generate heat as an intermediate energy form, so heat engines have special importance. Some
natural processes, such as atmospheric convection cells convert environmental heat into motion (e.g.
in the form of rising air currents). Mechanical energy is of particular importance in transportation, but
also plays a role in many industrial processes such as cutting, grinding, crushing, and mixing.

Mechanical heat engines convert heat into work via various thermodynamic processes. The internal
combustion engine is perhaps the most common example of a mechanical heat engine, in which heat
from the combustion of a fuel causes rapid pressurisation of the gaseous combustion products in the
combustion chamber, causing them to expand and drive a piston, which turns a crankshaft. Unlike
internal combustion engines, a reaction engine (such as a jet engine) produces thrust by expelling
reaction mass, in accordance with Newton's third law of motion.

Chemical heat engines which employ air (ambient atmospheric gas) as a part of the fuel reaction are
regarded as airbreathing engines. Chemical heat engines designed to operate outside of Earth's
atmosphere (e.g. rockets, deeply submerged submarines) need to carry an additional fuel component
called the oxidizer (although there exist super-oxidizers suitable for use in rockets, such as fluorine, a
more powerful oxidant than oxygen itself); or the application needs to obtain heat by non-chemical
means, such as by means of nuclear reactions.