You mean the motor kept running even when the car wasn’t moving?

Ten things you’ll have to explain to your grandkids

Maybe modern story time will include lessons about climate change and adaptation.

1. You mean the motor kept running even when the car wasn’t moving?

It will seem weird but an inquiring mind will want to make sense of it. We’ve grown accustomed to having a car motor continue running at a stop but it doesn’t really make sense. They run today because starting a car was once so difficult, especially when you had to hand-crank the engine. But even with electric starters, a starter could easily wear out if you used it every few minutes. You’d save some gas but it might not equal the cost of a new starter or the convenience of just going when the light turns green. So we leave our engines running. But electric car motors will only run when you want to move the car to help save the battery’s energy.

2. So, wait. Let me get this straight. They burned coal to boil water to make steam to power a dynamo that made electricity. Then only about 20 percent of the original energy made it to the consumer?

Yep, that’s the state of the art today with any power plant that burns fuel to make…