Hey there! My name is Parhys Napier. I will be your link to the mechanical engineering portion of MIT Insite! along with another blogger. This video here shows a little about me before I head off to class. This is my first post of many on MIT Insite! More will be coming soon.
If you’ve heard someone say “Mech E” in passing, they were probably referring to mechanically engineering. At MIT, Mechanical Engineers put Newtonian physics (also known as classical mechanics) to the test and apply them towards building robots or even sterling engines! Parhys and Michael talk a little bit more on what MechE mean:
Have you ever been on a bicycle before? How about a train? An airplane? A car? All modes of transportation were designed and created by mechanical engineers. Now, don’t confuse ‘mechanical engineer’ with ‘mechanic’. While it is true that both involve work on automobiles, a mechanical engineer can do so much more. The computer you are using to read this blog right now was designed and built by a mechanical engineer. Everything from cell phones to robots to space telescopes is created by mechanical engineers. Mechanical engineering uses a combination of higher level math and physics (the study of matter and how it moves) to create a large variety of devices essential to our everyday lives. Without mechanical engineers, the world around us would be harder to live in and a lot less interesting – there would be no way to play video games or watch television!
So you’ve seen a little bit of what Mechanical Engineering from the video Mike and I did. Mechanical engineering involves a lot of physics, which is basically how things move in the world around us. We have a few games that deal with physics for you to check out. Here’s a chance to see what other types of cool things one can do with mechanical engineering.
Bridge Builder – See what type of cool bridge designs you can make. How much weight can your bridge hold?
Blueprint – Use the available pieces to solve each puzzle. What strategies and basic concepts do you use to hit the target?
N3wton – Hit your opponent with a cannonball, but watch out – shooting doesn’t come without consequences. How is this game an example of Newton’s Third Law?
So now you should be able to figure out a little bit of physics from these games, which also helps you to understand mechanical engineering. Now try to answer this: Can you name four reasons why the engineering efforts of the Big Dig failed in the summer of 2006?
So you’ve seen some games that deal with mechanical engineering, and you’ve also seen some of the work I’ve been doing here at MIT. Here are some more videos about the projects happening here at MIT..
LEGO Robot Competition – So MIT has LEGO Robot competitions from time to time. Some classes here require students to put their skills to the test and create projects from the material they’ve learned. This class combines both mechanical engineering and electrical engineering/computer science.
Vehicle Design Summit – One of the biggest issues today is our use of energy and the effect on future generations. Here at MIT, students are working on creating a car that is environment-friendly, cheap, and uses less energy than the cars of today. I had the pleasure of helping to work with the research done on this car over the summer. For more info, visit Vehicle Design Summit.
This last video about Engineering Outreach Programs is a video filled with information about several summer programs that happen around MIT during the summer, including STEM, SEED, and MITES. You should see several familiar faces, including mine, and a few clips of the Underwater ROV competition that happened the summer the other bloggers and I were MITES students. My team’s (The Cardinals) machine is the red one with the black fin…the winning machine.
So far you’ve seen videos on the different things that other people have built. I’ve given links to different projects that involve mechanical engineering (energy cars, LEGO robot competition, etc.). I’ve even shown some of the things that I’ve done, ranging from an actual robot being made (the beast that is “Moses” – the first place underwater machine my teammates and I built while in high school) to design (as I did on my laptop in designing a component of the space telescope this past January).
Michael has already given a list of simple machines that we use everyday – levers, screws, wedges, etc. What different combinations of these simple machines can you think of to make a more complex machine – that is how it starts. Complex machines, when broken down to smaller pieces, are just various combinations of very simple machines (with a few more tricky ones). Think of a car: how many simple machines do you figure are used in making a car? Or even in a day in your life – just think of how many times you used a wheel and axle to get somewhere? A “screw” to tighten something? A lever to rotate or lift something, like a pencil sharpener? How many simple machines do you use in one day alone?
And another thing: to build something doesn’t mean it has to be hard. It doesn’t have to be anything as complex as a robot or a car or a telescope. A friend of mine once made a stand for a photo using paper clips and some pliers. Aaron and Mike made a system stacker out of cardboard, tape, and some books. I used a piece of cardboard taped to a ruler as a dustpan in my room. Anything that requires your mind and your hands to create something out of seemingly useless materials is something you have built, something created.
So just think about it…what things have you built? Are you working on a project right now? Or even better…what kinds of things would you one day like to see yourself building?
At MIT, one of the well known places for projects in mechanical engineering is the Edgerton Center. The Edgerton Center is creates opportunities for students to engage in challenging activities and projects in engineering and science.
I went down to the Edgerton Center this weekend and talked to some of the staff that work there. Two high school students from one of the local schools were working to shoot a laser into a glass square without letting any of the light leave…and they did it! By using milk of all things. It was pretty cool.
I talked to some of the staff members at the EC and was blown away by the many projects that have been going on at MIT. There were hover-boards (machines that allow a person to stand on top and hover off the ground), BattleBots (like in the video I posted a while ago), strobes, and other cool things. The coolest project was this one machine, where you could stand on top of it and use the handles to move around. if you pushed it forward, you accelerated forward, if you pulled back, you moved back, and so on. I learned that it was made by some students not that much older than most of you. I got to ride on it up and down the hall – it was a LOT of fun.
You guys should check out the Edgerton Center and look at the cool projects it has to offer. I know I’ll be visiting the EC a LOT more now that I see what’s in store. Visit http://web.mit.edu/Edgerton/