What is Mechanical Engineering?
Mechanical Engineering is an excellent general education for today's technological world. MEs conceive, construct, test, and operate all kinds of mechanical, thermal, and biological devices.
It requires a solid understanding ofcore concepts including mechanics, kinematics, thermodynamics and energy.Mechanical engineers use these core principles to design and analyze motorvehicles, aircraft, heating and cooling systems, watercraft, manufacturingplants, industrial equipment and machinery, robotics, medical devices,alternative energy solutions and more.
Subdisciplines
Mechanical Engineering may be divided into a number of subdisciplines, which can include the following:
- Mechanics is the study of motion and forces producing motion.
- Kinematics is the study of the motion of bodies or groups of bodies.
- Structural analysis is the branch of mechanical engineering (and also civil engineering) devoted to examining why and how objects fail.
- Thermodynamics is the study of energy, its use and transformation through a system.
- Mechatronics technology combining electronics and mechanical engineering.. An example of such a system would be an optical disc drive. Mechanical systems open and close the drive, spin the disc and move the laser, while a laser reads the data on the disc.
- Robotics is the application of mechatronics in the creation of robots.
- Drafting is the means by which mechanical engineers create instructions for manufacturing parts. A technical drawing can be a computer model or hand-drawn schematic showing all the dimensions necessary to manufacture a part, as well as assembly notes, a list of required materials, and other pertinent information.