Even the food you buy has benefited from the work of engineers who developed tractors, trains, refrigeration cars and, in the case of agricultural engineers, better ways to grow crops. Most of the products you buy were designed and developed directly by engineers. The scientist explores what is, the engineer creates what has not been. Mechanical engineers design and develop everything you think of as a machine, from the SR-71 Blackbird shown above to toasters and power tools. We design everything that is mechanical such as wheels and axles, airplane bodies, pumps, computer hard drives, bicycles and heart-lung machines.
Mechanical engineers are concerned with the production, transmission and use of power.
We design and develop systems which produce power such as steam and gas turbines, car engines, nuclear reactors, jet engines and rocket motors. We design and develop the devices that consume power in order to accomplish a useful result, such as refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, elevators and loud-speakers. In addition all of these products must not only be designed, they must also be built. Mechanical engineering is an extremely broad field. Projects being undertaken by mechanical engineers range from medical issues such as the freezing of living tissue and development of an artificial liver, to understanding the currents and waves in the oceans.