How does a washing machine work?

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Most homes are lucky enough to have one, but have you ever wondered how a washing machine works? After separating your laundry into whites and colours – so as to protect your whites from colour run – load your clothes into the main drum and close the door. Once you’ve programmed the machine to tell it what sort of wash you require – temperature, speed, length and so on – the machine then adds water and detergent and sloshes the clothes around. After a time, the drum will spin really fast – up to 80mph (130kph) – creating a centrifugal force that extracts most of the water out of the clothes and out through the holes in the inner drum where it is then pumped away.