What is Mechanical Engineering?

  Mechanical Engineering

    Mechanical Engineering is a branch of engineering that focuses on the design analysis and manufacturing of mechanical systems this major is highly math especially calculus and physics based one of the great things about mechanical engineering is that is highly versatile in what you can do students who graduate as a mechanical engineering major can go into construction automotive heating and air-conditioning materials robotics work in the energy sector combustion engines and many more now besides mechanical engineering classes you'll take a little bit of everything basically you have to take a few electrical engineering classes to learn about the basics of circuits and possibly some of the basics of electronics as well you have to do a little programming and become decently proficient in MATLAB which is a software that allows you to create plots and graphs and do complicated math way beyond what your graphing calculator can do you'll possibly have to do a welding class then of course you have to take about two years of math mostly calculus and about one year of physics now the first main class of mechanical engineering would be statics where you'll look at the physics of systems that aren't moving this would be like looking at the forces and torques in something like a truss that holds up a bridge where you have to analyze the forces that individual beams feel due to external forces then the next class would be dynamics where you look at systems that are moving it's similar to your high school physics classes projectile motion momentum energy forces and more but is much more involved you look at the motion of much more complex systems have to find things like velocity acceleration energy force and more of different parts of that system then your third year you even take a more advanced version of this class or you look at these complex systems but now in three dimensions so as you can probably already see mechanical engineering involves a lot of advanced physics when you enter your third year you'll take a course called fluid mechanics and in this course you'll stay the properties and mechanics of fluids such as air and water this class is very calculus based for example you could study how the pressure of water changes as it flows through a set of pipes in a closed environment as height and pipe dimensions change the principles to solve this are foundational for how your car brakes work this class also includes the physics of how wind turbines work and why they are made the way they are so that they move as much as possible from any amount of wind and you could analyze why different shapes are better or worse and if airplanes interests you you can even learn how wind flows over a wing to produce aerodynamic force which also applies to car aerodynamics which if optimized increases cars mpg you also take a class called thermodynamics which deals with the relations between heat and other forms of energy such as mechanical electrical or chemical in this class you'll study the combustion engine which applies to cars boats and aircrafts and you'll learn these engines in great depth and see how they are constantly making adjustments to make them more efficient go go as far back and learn at how the first steam engine was created and it will learn how similar ideas are still being used in power plants today to produce energy to power your TV turn on your lights and power your appliances you'll then take a vibrations class where you'll analyze the mechanical vibrations that occur in different objects think about if you were to drop a metal object when it hits the ground you might observe or even hear it vibrating will in mechanical systems like planes cars satellites and more that are moving but also contain parts like motors and engines that are also moving at very high speeds it's important to analyze the system even down to the vibrations to ensure the system can withstand those vibrations that occur have you ever seen in movies a person make a high-pitched note and it causes something like a glass to shatter that's because the sound is making the glass vibrate at just the right frequency called the natural frequency that makes it shattered buildings even need to account for this because in the case of an earthquake the building will shake and vibrations will be created this is actually a building in Japan that was structurally built to a stand high winds and strong earthquakes from causing strong vibrations one thing they did was put something called a tuned mass damper near the top of the building which weighs 728 tons and is something that has engineered to reduce mechanical vibrations that can actually save the building from destruction during natural disasters in 1940 the Tacoma bridge collapsed and what they found afterwards was the vibrations occurred due to interactions between the bridge and the wind which just kept amplifying until it fell apart like most mechanical engineering classes this one is highly calculus-based because you have to model very complex systems and motion then you'll take some design classes and these are kind of a combination of materials engineering and mechanical engineering we will look at the strength and durability of different materials mechanisms and structures that's a mechanical engineer someone might tell you they need a certain motor to make a million cycles without braking or maybe they needed to run for 10 years without braking this could even apply to just how much weight can a beam support before braking and how much stress is a subject - with a certain amount of weight now there are few concentrations within mechanical engineering a few specific ones include heating and ventilation air conditioning and refrigeration or HVAC as it's called then mechatronics and manufacturing now HVAC goes into more vehicle and indoor comfort using your knowledge of fluids thermodynamics and heat transfer an HVAC concentration leads to working on maintaining heat and ventilated air in something like a large commercial building cars apartment buildings homes hospitals hotels and more where you'll have to understand how heat travels throughout the building and different materials when you see those ducts in large buildings those have to be carefully placed in order to ensure comfort throughout the whole building by knowledge of thermodynamics and air flow now it may not seem like it but seeing how these systems actually work can actually be pretty involved then mechatronics is like the combination of mechanical engineering electronics and some Computer Engineering as a mechanical engineer when it comes to robotics you'd be able to build the robot structurally and make sure it can withstand a certain amount of force but with mechatronics you dive more into also the programming and circuiting of the robot so with a mechatronics concentration you'd basically have all the sub-disciplines necessary to build circuit and program a robot and this is applications an embedded system sensing and controls robotics and more now the manufacturing concentration is a little more broad because you can learn things from the design of a part to the actual materials used for the part manufacturing might involve learning techniques that help you predict when a certain part will fail this major will be helpful in teaching you that slight alterations in design or material of a part can have a drastic impact on the overall price which becomes an important component in the design and manufacturing of parts lay to profit margins and running a business now these are just some examples of concentrations but there are many more sub disciplines and as a mechanical engineer you have a lot of flexibility as a mechanical engineer you could work on cars but to be more specific you could work on improving the engine to make it more efficient you could work on the suspension of the car to ensure can handle the forces of the car subject to like could it handle going over a speed bump too fast or you can do crash testing and look at the materials and shape of the car to see what it can withstand and how it would affect a person inside or you can maybe analyze how air flows over or through the car and optimize its aerodynamics to make it go faster from knowledge of your fluids classes and this could even be applied to planes or drones a mechanical engineer could also work with biomedical engineers on things like prosthetic body parts they might need to help make sure the mechanism is strong enough to understand the forces they'll have to put up with or they might have decided what's the best material to use mechanical engineers can also work on alternative forms of energy like on wind farms hydroelectric solar and more they can work on satellites and use mechanics to analyze the vibrations during high acceleration or they can use thermodynamics to analyze the temperature differences that the satellites go through as they orbit the earth they can see mechanical engineers really have no limits to what they can see in their career you.