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Mechanical engineering is a branch of engineering that focuses on the design, analysis, and manufacturing of mechanical systems.
An overview of mechanical engineering: its versatile career paths, core coursework from statics and dynamics to fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and vibrations, and real-world examples.
Key Takeaways
- Mechanical engineering is a versatile field with applications across many industries.
- The discipline relies heavily on calculus and physics, supplemented by programming and electrical engineering basics.
- Core classes build from static systems to dynamic, fluid, thermal, and vibration analysis.
- Vibration and dynamic analysis are critical for safety in structures and moving machinery.
What the video covers
- Mechanical engineering focuses on the design, analysis, and manufacturing of mechanical systems and is highly math-based, especially calculus and physics.
- Graduates can work in construction, automotive, HVAC, materials, robotics, the energy sector, and combustion engines, among many other fields.
- Students also take electrical engineering basics, some programming, MATLAB proficiency, possibly welding, about two years of math, and about one year of physics.
- Statics studies forces and torques on non-moving systems, such as the beams of a bridge truss.
- Dynamics studies moving systems and is similar to high school physics but far more involved, covering motion, momentum, energy, and forces.
- Fluid Mechanics covers how fluids like air and water behave, with applications to car brakes, wind turbines, aerodynamics, and fuel efficiency.
- Thermodynamics covers the relationships between heat and mechanical, electrical, or chemical energy, including combustion engines and power plants.
- Vibrations analysis ensures systems like planes, cars, and buildings withstand vibrations, including natural frequency effects and tuned mass dampers.
- The Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse in 1940 is cited as an example of wind-induced vibrations amplifying until failure.
- Mechanical engineering coursework is consistently calculus-based because complex systems and motion must be modeled mathematically.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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This major is highly math-based, especially calculus and physics.
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One of the great things about mechanical engineering is that it is highly versatile in what you can do.
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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.
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Besides mechanical engineering classes, you'll take a little bit of everything.
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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.
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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.
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You'll possibly have to do a welding class.
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Then, of course, you have to take about two years of math, mostly calculus, and about one year of physics.
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Now, the first main class of mechanical engineering would be Statics, where you'll look at the physics of systems that aren't moving.
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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.
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Then the next class would be Dynamics, where you look at systems that are moving.
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It's similar to your high school physics class, with projectile motion, momentum, energy, forces, and more, but it is much more involved.
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You look at the motion of much more complex systems and have to find things like velocity, acceleration, energy, force, and more of different parts of that system.
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Then, in your third year, you even take a more advanced version of this class where you look at these complex systems, but now in three dimensions.
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So, as you can probably already see, mechanical engineering involves a lot of advanced physics.
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When you enter your third year, you'll take a course called Fluid Mechanics, and in this course you'll study the properties and mechanics of fluids such as air and water.
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This class is very calculus-based.
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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.
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The principles to solve this are foundational for how your car brakes work.
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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.
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You can analyze why different shapes are better or worse.
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If airplanes interest you, you could even learn how wind flows over a wing to produce aerodynamic force, which also applies to car aerodynamics, which, if optimized, increases a car's MPG.
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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.
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In this class you'll study the combustion engine, which applies to cars, boats, and aircraft, and you'll learn these engines in great depth and see how they are constantly making adjustments to make them more efficient.
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You'll go as far back as learning how the first steam engine was created, and you'll 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.
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You'll then take a Vibrations class, where you'll analyze the mechanical vibrations that occur in different objects.
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Think about if you were to drop a metal object: when it hits the ground, you might observe, or even hear, it vibrating.
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Well, 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.
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Have you ever seen in movies a person make a high-pitch note and it causes something like a glass to shatter?
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That's because the sound is making the glass vibrate at just the right frequency, called the natural frequency, that makes it shatter.
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Buildings even need to account for this, because in the case of an earthquake the building will shake and vibrations will be created.
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This is actually a building in Japan that was structurally built to withstand high winds and strong earthquakes, from causing strong vibrations.
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One thing they did was put something called a tuned mass damper near the top of the building, which weighs 728 tons and is engineered to reduce mechanical vibrations.
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That can actually save the building from destruction during natural disasters.
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In 1940, the Tacoma Narrows 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.
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Like most mechanical engineering classes, this one is highly calculus-based, because you have to model very complex systems and motion.
Topics:mechanical engineeringstaticsdynamicsfluid mechanicsthermodynamicsvibrationsengineering careerscalculusMATLABengineering education
