> The thing I find interesting is that my car weighs easily enough to crush 
> every single bone on your body... and yet it's not actually that hard to 
> push it along a road.
...
> (I guess my wheel baring work really well?)

I guess they design them to be pretty good :-)

> (Also curios is the fact that the car doesn't accelerate when you drive it 
> down a hill... You'd think it would.)

Press the clutch and start off at 5mph so as to avoid any air drag.  It 
should accelerate then.

> I would think this electric motor trickery probably also saves fuel on 
> low-speed manovers like trying to park. [Think how much you have to rev 
> the engine to make a car move that slowly...]

Ermm, my car moves just by lifting the clutch gently, no need to rev at all.

> ...OK, so maybe it wasn't exactly 10^(-6). But it worked out to be some 
> absurdly small figure anyway.

IIRC you meant that amount per revolution of the engine, not per minute!

> I've always wanted to know... An engine is a mechanical device. So why 
> does temperature have any effect on anything?

Things expand with temperature, an engine is designed to run smoothly at 
it's operating temperature, below that there is a lot more friction.

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