A Short Intro to the World of Mechanical Engineeering

As I previously studied philosophy, a lot of people assumed I would spend a few years in cave contemplating the meaning of life or end up going to law school. Since I decided to go back to school for mechanical engineering, many people have asked me why. When asked, I usually have three main points; one, I am not fond of dark, gloomy caves; two, I would rather not spend 3 years of my life slaving away in a dusty library and then 10 years working 90 hour weeks arguing about precedent and perjury; and finally three, who wouldn’t want to potentially become "a billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" with an awesome suit of armor like Tony Stark? I have to admit, the movie Ironman II sparked my initial inner-fire to pursue a career in mechanical engineering. With the dream of designing and building a sweet mechanical suit that could save the day came the question; what do mechanical engineers really do?

We all wanna be Ironman.. Right?

As I researched this, there is a problem with the question. What almost could be asked is; what don’t mechanical engineers do? As undergraduates we study force and motion, heat, energy, and how they interact with environments and especially things people build. We dabble in energy production and computers, or materials for buildings and machines that make machines. You could define mechanical engineers as people who create, design, and build products, while also working on the boring instructions and documentation so that people can use these products. We must use computer programs to build parts for simulations and programed instructions on how to manufacture the parts. We can experiment with the amount of heat a product can take or at what speed it is most efficient.

An undergrad during finals

In many ways, undergraduate mechanical engineers could be considered the jack-of-all-trades. While this may sound awesome, (“you people get to learn everything”) or incredibly boring, (“you people have to learn everything”), it makes defining mechanical engineering quite hard. Like many engineers, as professionals mechanical engineers must specialize because of the breadth of the field, or risk having their heads explode from information overload.
  
For this post we won’t have enough room to look at all the different areas, so I chose a few that sets mechanical engineers apart. One life-saving discipline is a concentration in biomedical engineering. Quite a few engineers are working on new surgery tools that can make surgery safer or drug delivery devices/methods that could drastically reduce costs. Another important area of study is energy efficiency, where engineers look at potentially more efficient ways of producing energy with solar cells or using the ambient energy from the earth to cool or heat a house. An area that I am interested in is of course robotics. 

Strong and cute - definitely from Japan.

In this field engineers have made strides in creating walking, face-recognizing robots that could potentially help the elderly and do your laundry (or take over the world if you offend them). Of course mechanical engineers do not work alone, as the lone and eccentric inventor in the company’s secret lair is somewhat rare. They collaborate with other engineers (from electrical to civil) or researchers (like medical doctors) in many of these areas.
 
While some of you might have a better idea of what a mechanical engineer does, others might be saying, “you’ve introduced a lot of new research, some vague definitions, but what can a mechanical engineer do for me, in my daily life?” That is a great question and I will use common product that you might be familiar with: the iPhone. The first iPhones had a problem in the lab; when the engineers put them in their pocket, the glass would get all scratched up from anything metal; i.e. keys, change, etc. Quite a few years before (1960) a group of researchers developed a scratch-resistant material called Chemcor glass, but they didn’t find a wide, commercial use for this product. Well, the two got together in 2006, and after some initial concerns about not being able to make enough glass, now called Gorilla Glass, the iPhone emerged as a game-changing product complete with its scratch-resistant glass. As of 2011, the glass could be found in 200 million handset devices worldwide. From nearly 0 to 200 million in 5 years, not bad! The U of Columbia puts it nicely, “The role of a mechanical engineer is to take a product from an idea to the marketplace.” While in this case it took almost 50 years, the product is now a success, made possible through mechanical engineering, specifically material science with a combination of pure sand and a proprietary-recipe of chemicals.

To summarize, mechanical engineers are part of the process of inventing, designing, building, and sometimes even repairing a large gamut of products, from airplanes to iPhones or demolition charges to nano-bots. While I may not build a suit of armor and become a rich superhero (anytime soon), I am still excited to be part of a field that has such a large range of opportunities and application. And I could always work on my suit after hours in the lab; mechanical engineer by day, crime-fighter by night!

Maybe in the Future?