you'll notice that many of them have engines with large frontal areas and cylinders arranged about the propeller crankshaft.

The engine is designed to take advantage of the simple crank design of radial engines to make a robust and widely adjustable variable compression engine. By replacing one of the pistons in the ...

In the video after the break, [Brick Technology] uses LEGO to gain some practical insight into the world of piston engine design, from single-cylinder all the way up to radial twelve-cylinder engines.