system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Turbo in an Engine. And the difference between Turbo, Turbo-charger and super-charger and how these differ from just a regular old combustion engine.
gpt
First, understand that the mix gasoline and air combusts best in a fairly narrow range of ratios. So for a given amount of air, you have to have a proportional amount of fuel to make the engine work well. The more fuel-air mix you can burn, the more power the engine will produce. It's reasonably easy to get more fuel into an engine; the challenge therefore is to get more air in for the fuel to mix with.

A turbocharger (aka turbo) is two turbines joined by a shaft. One turbine is the the exhaust stream of the engine, so that any time the engine is running, the exhaust spins the turbine. This turns the shaft, which turns the other turbine, which is in the intake. The turbine on the intake side pushes more air into the engine. Since there's more air, more fuel can also be added, and this makes more power.

A supercharger has the same effect - it pushes more air into the engine, but it's driven by a belt rather than by the exhaust gasses. The belt turns a centrifugal impeller or a screw-type pump to do this. Again, more air means more fuel can be added, and the engine can make more power.

With neither of these things, engines work fine for a lot of applications. The simple motion of the pistons creates a vacuum, which sucks in air pretty well; but again there's a limit to just how much air an engine can get this way - and therefore how much fuel can be burned.