Mechanical engineering is a broad field that involves the design and creation of a vast array of products, from regular household items such as kitchen appliances to airplanes or artificial organs. Find out more about the different fields of mechanical engineering. Schools offering .
Brief Overview of Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical engineers use science to solve problems, whether it's designing a coffee maker to fit your kitchen counter to manufacturing all of the parts that go into it. It's an extremely broad discipline and includes materials science, fluid mechanics, control theory, bioengineering and heat transfer, among other fields, like robotics, thermodynamics, nanotechnology and manufacturing.
Robotics
As a mechanical engineer working in the field of robotics, you may design and fabricate machines and devices that interact with their surroundings and can be operated remotely. Robots can range from simple machinery to complex creations that perform repetitive tasks in manufacturing settings, hazardous tasks too dangerous for humans or more nuanced motions, such as moving a limb. As a robotics engineer, you may work in many different industries, including agriculture and transportation.
Thermodynamics
If you're working in thermodynamics, your focus is on energy and the systems available to conserve and transform it for a number of different uses. For example, you may design systems that change thermal heat into mechanical energy. You could work in geothermal energy production or refrigeration. You may use your knowledge of heat transfer and fluid mechanics to help design power plants, propulsion systems or refrigeration and air conditioning systems.
