There are two aspects of torque that affect daily life that I want to comment on.
The first deals with my Army specialty dating from the early 1960’s. I was in a railway repair unit. (No railroads in Vietnam.) None of my fellow enlistee reservists were interest in our railroad training during summer camp. It was a time to drink and sleep for them. I used the time to drive locomotives, repair diesel engines and learn welding.
The engines then and now were diesel electric. A giant 6 cylinder diesel was running all the time at the most efficient RPM, turning a generator. The generator was used to run electric motors connected to all the wheels of the engine. Why was a diesel engine driving an electric power system?
You only needed to look at the load an engine pulls. 100 freight cars in a line. A heavy line.
The problem is to get the load moving in the first place, from a dead stop.
An electric motor has its greatest power between zero and one mile per hour. That is when the electromagnet in the motor pulls its first fraction of an inch of iron. That pull becomes rotation. Power applied to rotation is called torque. You know how a magnet can snap something nearby.
Torque is why electric cars are so zippy. They start with immense torque to go from zero to moving. That is why hybrids start off with electricity before they go to gasoline motors at higher speeds. Electric has the most torque at starting speeds.
Our other daily encounter with torque is the human body. I learned this from my son when he taught me Chinese martial arts 15 years ago. I soon got to see the plastinated bodies on a tour from China.
Our bodies are entirely torqued to get movement. Every muscle has a twist to it to get maximum strength. The same is true for bones, ligaments and connecting tissue. It is with torque that we are able to move and balance.
Chinese martial arts focuses on twisting and torque movements for power and leverage. I use all the twisting exercises and movements to remain limber.
I see myself as a vast infinite collecting of torqued connections.