Talk:Mechanical engineering

M.E. Experience Levels

How are job positions of Mechanical Engineer I, II, III, IV, etc defined? A lot of engineering job position listings have these numerals in their titles. Please add this to the article if you know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Posilute (talk • contribs) 03:06, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

• That'll vary from company to company as to what exactly the levels mean. I've seen junior, senior, principal and other terms used as well. I don;t think wikipedia articles should get into that kind of thing. -Fnlayson 05:09, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
• I second Fnlayson's comment, above. Mechanical Engineer I, II... is something that is specifically defined by a company, so the approprate place to discuss it, if anywhere, is the article for that company. However, as these titles may change even within a company, and are generally not widely used outside the hiring process, I question whether they meet notability and encyclopaedic content criteria. -Âme Errante (talk) 01:27, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

ME user box

If you are a mechanical engineer, please add this to your user page. Thanks: ----CheMechanical 00:53, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

This user is a  
Mechanical Engineer.

PE user box

If you are a professional engineer, please add this to your user page. Thanks: ----CheMechanical 00:54, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

PEThis user is a licensed
Professional Engineer.

How do you become a mechanical engineer?

How do you do it? What is the difference between other engineering things? Someone should put this into the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.63.60.32 (talk) 02:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The article discusses engineering education around the world, and the various degrees denoting a mechanical engineer. It also discusses the act of licensure, i.e. becoming a licensed mechanical engineer. I'm curious as to what supplementary information you're looking for.

I'm curious as to what you mean by 'other engineering things'. Are you asking what the difference is between a mechanical engineer and, say, an electrical engineer? If so, this article links in the first paragraph to the article on 'engineering', which describes the field of engineering in general and how it is split up into disciplines.

Overall, I'm not sure what you're looking for. Could you please provide a more in-depth explanation of what you believe to be missing in this article?

-Âme Errante (talk) 01:24, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Update to Tools section

I updated the Tools section to more better represent the state of the CAE industry (which I assume was the point of the section). Feel free to fix anything I missed! - EndingPop (talk) 22:23, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the edit... that section looks a lot better now. The section was originally added several years ago by someone (I don't remember exactly who it was) who didn't like how I split the article into subdisciplines. He felt the article needed a section on exactly how mechanical engineers do their engineering, rather than just discussing all the areas we work on, hence this section. From my experience at several companies, a large part of the design process is computer-aided. However, you'd be surprised at how much of it is still low-tech and rule of thumb in practice. Perhaps this would be something to discuss eventually, but I'm not sure this is the article for it. All that being said, I'm going to remove the 'please improve this section' tag... it could certainly be expanded, but it's not exactly in 'dire need' compared to any other section.

Also, in relation to the note about this article being written by a teacher, I was actually a student when I wrote most of this article, hence the focus on education... you write what you know, certainly. I never expected my edits to last this long, so please feel free to (intelligently) edit the article as you wish. -Brandon (Âme Errante (talk) 21:45, 6 May 2008 (UTC))

Education: Extraneous Information

I removed the following sentence from the article:

In Germany, Austria, and many other central and eastern European countries the (BSc) and (BTech) are available as an intermediate (or final) 4 year degree; however, the longer "Diplomas";(Dipl), (Dipl-Ing), (Dipl-Tech); are still the most relevant degrees.

Not only is it uncited, it does not seem to add to the article. However, I am not from any country in eastern Europe, so I do not know if this is an important distinction. Can someone knowledgeable look over this and let me know if we should include it in the article?

Thanks,

-Âme Errante (talk) 00:41, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Things to add?

These used to be in the to do list, but they sat there for a long time.

• Add a 'Related Disciplines' section. Because mechanical engineering is so broad, there is overlap between mechanical engineering and other branches of engineering. For example, in aerospace the design of aircraft bodies is performed by both mechanical engineers (who look at structure) and aerospace engineers (who look at drag and lift).
• Mechanical enginnering is not just " ...the application of principles of physics..." it's much more, e.g., combustion is more chemistry than physics.

I'm wondering if perhaps the first of these is outside the scope of the article and shouldn't be added. As for the second, this should probably be debated, rather than put on the to-do list. My experience in engineering, for one, is that combustion is explored in terms of energy states (thermodynamics) and end products rather than electron transfer and intermediate chemical reactions. Thoughts?

-Âme Errante (talk) 01:12, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry it's taking me a while

I want to be really careful on the Cold fusion review...and as luck would have it, a significant event happened this week that we have to cover. I should get to this article within a day or two. In the meantime, read the first part of WP:LEAD, please; the lead section is meant to tell readers what to expect in the article, and the lead of this article should be a bit longer than it is. WP:WIAGA mentions WP:LEAD and a few other specific guidelines to follow. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:01, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I liked the images and captions in this article, and I have used some of them as examples of good, succinct caption style at WP:Captions. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:16, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Apologies again; I'm almost ready to start the review at Mechanical engineering. It looks like the review of Cold fusion is going to have to go on hold unless/until people can come up with better sources. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

As I feared, Cold fusion took a long time, but we're done now. Is anyone else working on this article, or am I dealing only with the nominator here? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 12:37, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Good Article review

I have to apologize again; illness in the family and various wikidramas have made me take much, much longer on this review than anyone should. Also, it's important to me to do a good job and be able to justify my decisions, and this is of course harder with a technical article on a subject that I'm not entirely familiar with. I'll get it done just as soon as I can. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Mechanical engineering/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

I'm happy to do thorough reviews, because we need more participation from science and tech editors, and because the WP:GAU review indicated that almost everyone bringing articles to WP:GAN wants more input on their writing. I'm happy to do less if you want less.

Quick-fail criteria

1. Plenty of reliable sources.
2. Neutrality issues are completely absent; quite a relief after Cold fusion!
3. No cleanup tags.
4. The article has been very stable recently.
5. The article doesn't concern a current event.

I don't see any issues; editors are welcome to correct me. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:33, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Well written

2010 update: I've gone through the points below, and fixed the couple that remained unaddressed. The 'sea of blue' seems a bit better, though probably still more than some would like. A couple people suggested spinning off the education section into a different article, however my opinion is that the size is manageably small relative to the length of the article. If there's disagreement when we re-submit a GA nomination there's precedent in Electrical Engineering to work from. Âme Errante (talk) 08:02, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

• Please read WP:LEAD. The lead section for this article should be two to four paragraphs, summarizing the main points.
• There's an issue with the "sea of blue" in the lead section, although this is sometimes a point of disagreement between WP:FAC reviewers and more scientifically-inclined editors. Scientists prefer denser articles with more links than the average Wikipedia reader, so it's a judgment call. I have followed all the links from the lead, and I thought they all added very useful information, except for motor vehicles.
• I replaced the ampersands with "and", per WP:MOS.
• Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I replaced "Mechanical engineering could be found in many ancient and medieval societies throughout the globe" with "Applications of mechanical engineering...". You're defining mechanical engineering as an academic discipline, but your examples don't point to academicians, they're pointing to devices that were designed using principles that nowadays would come from mechanical engineering.
• I added a bit of information on engineering societies in the 19th century.
• When discussing history in general, use "can be found" rather than "could be found", if the implication is that modern people are the ones doing the finding.
• I wouldn't mind inclusion of a study breaking down which courses are taken on average by mechanical engineering students in various countries, but just saying that they tend to study humanities doesn't really help, IMO.
• I'm doing a lot of the copyediting myself. There are a lot of pages devoted to capitalization rules in style guides such as NYTM and AP Stylebook, but a rule of thumb is: if the sentence can possibly be read with a word or phrase being used in the sense of a common noun, then don't capitalize.
• "to continue even after the analyst goes home for the day": I don't know what this means.
• The list in Mechanical engineering#Mechatronics and robotics would be better as prose with a little more description; see the first paragraph of WP:EMBED#Lists_within_articles.
• "draftsman" (or "draughtsman") vs "drafter" is one of those rare gender-neutral issues that I can't make up my mind on; I don't think it's clear how this one is going to play out. Whatever you guys want to do about this is fine.
• What was the relevance of the PIV disambiguation page in See also?

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:48, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Detailed review. Not bad. I wouldn't mind going into detail what my mechanical engineering coursework involves in order to get my bachelors degree, but I would imagine WP:ONESOURCE (since the course catalog's online - not original research) would be a problem. Also, there are many different universities that focuses mechanical engineering into automotive engineering, thermodynamics, mechatronics, spatial systems, dynamics-focused, which will ultimately alter the types of coursework required to accomplish the degree, but I do agree that humanities electives and communications requirements should not be necessarily listed in detail, but should be noted that a certain level of competence in humanities, communications, and in some cases, economy and biology (for nano-robotics focused mechanical engineering degrees). Please let me know when you're ready to take that step. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 15:41, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. It seems to me that this is exactly the kind of information that many readers of this article would want to see. At some level of detail, it should either be spun off into a separate article, or moved to Wikibooks, but if it's at Wikibooks, I would like to see links both to and from that specific page, so that it becomes a kind of extension of this article. "What would I have to study?" and "What could I expect mechanical engineers to know?" are central questions, and even if the answers would make some people's eyes glaze over, it would still improve Wikipedia to have the answers for the people who want to know. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:06, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I think there's going to be a good chance that it would belong in a separate article, since citing only a couple of tracks for mechanical engineering specialties would cause possible neutrality issues. However, I don't believe What to study to become a mechanical engineer would be a suitable article for Wikipedia. WikiUniversity might work though... - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 16:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Aha, I just noticed that someone has made a start already...it's in Mechanical engineering technology, further down on the page. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Although the topics are very similar, mechanical engineering is not the same as mechanical engineering technology. It's a step lower than a mechanical engineer. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 20:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Factually accurate and verifiable

2010 update: I wasn't sure the reference suggested in the first point below specifically supported Heron 'deeply influencing mechanics', so I change the wording to reference his steam engine and added the ref to britannica. Archimedes is well known enough and his contributions varied enough (in my opinion) that specific examples aren't needed. More work remains to be done on citation issues.

• There's no reference, inline or otherwise, for the statement about the importance of Heron of Alexandria. You can't use a WP article as a reference, and that WP article unfortunately doesn't use web references. I suggest using this one: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9040189/Heron-of-Alexandria. If you don't subscribe to EB, it begins: "Greek geometer and inventor whose writings preserved for posterity a knowledge of the mathematics and engineering of Babylonia, ancient Egypt, and the Greco-Roman world." You don't need a reference for every statement in an article, just a reference for every statement "challenged or likely to be challenged" (WP:V). A lot of people haven't heard of Heron (aka Hero) of Alexandria, so that needs a source.
• "deeply influenced" is not good. Per WP:WEASEL, give a short sentence, at least, saying what we got from Heron and Archimedes that makes them important. I added a short list of accomplishments for Zhang Heng and Ma Jun (which would be improved by citations from those articles).
• In Mechanical engineering#Salaries and workforce statistics, the present tense is used with 2004. Either the figures need to be updated, or the tone needs to be something different from "current events".
• "I'm skeptical about master's degrees not requiring any coursework; let's just say that it may or may not include research" in the edit summary was me, not logged in.
• "Most mechanical engineering programs also require varying amounts of research or community projects to gain practical problem-solving experience. Mechanical engineering students usually hold one or more internships while studying, though this is not typically mandated by the university." At that level of detail, I think you need a source, and not just a source that says what happens at one university. If you just said "Some mechanical engineering programs include community projects and internships", that probably wouldn't need a cite. (Research was mentioned earlier.)
• "Canadian engineers make an average of $29.83 per hour...". Again, that's from 2004, but the "accessed" date implies it's for 2007. Please go through the whole article making sure that old data is represented as being old data, or even better, update the data.
• "second only to civil engineers in size". Hm, I think you meant something else.
• "Canadian engineers make an average of $29.83" Canadian dollars?
• I'm waiting on an answer from WP:RSN about www.jobfutures.ca. Done, see below.
• I don't think www.worldwidelearn.com can be a reliable source by itself; what else can you find?
• http://onlineethics.org/codes/ and http://www.deas.harvard.edu/undergradstudy/engineeringsciences/mechanical/index.html are broken links.
• Accessing one university's course listing doesn't support a statement about mechanical engineering programs in general; at least, I'd like to see listings from a few more universities, and there are probably more comprehensive sources for this information, if you can find them.
• It's not clear which reference the first few paragraphs of Mechanical engineering#License depend on. Citations are needed throughout Mechanical engineering#Subdisciplines, Mechanical engineering#Modern tools and Mechanical engineering#Frontiers of research. I don't think the editors are trying to "get away" with anything; the See also's are clearly listed, and those articles have references. But wikilinks can't be used as sources for an article. I've not a fan of lots of inline citations for material that appears in basic textbooks; for this kind of material, a few citations to textbooks will do. And of course, you can simply verify and copy over relevant sources from the See also articles for much of the currently unreferenced material.

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:48, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Broad in its coverage

It's not going to fail WP:GAN for not being broad enough. There are many directions to go in, of course, but that's what the many See also links and Wikibooks are for. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:48, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Neutral

No neutrality issues, exactly. You could argue that asking Professional Engineers how important it is to be a Professional Engineer might give a biased answer, but it's not that important. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:48, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Stable

The article is stable, or was until I got my hands on it :) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:48, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Images

The images are helpful, and the captions are good. In fact, I'm using the captions as an example of good caption-writing at WP:CAPTIONS. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:48, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

References comment

Doesn't seem to have enough inline references to me. But then I don't see any fact tags either and I'm more used to Feature Article reviews. -Fnlayson (talk) 16:44, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Good news from WP:RSN

Copied from WP:RSN#http://www.jobfutures.ca/en/listing_organizations.shtml:

I don't know if it's just me, but I'm having a hard time getting up to speed on WP:RSN issues; I often run down this page and realize that I have no idea what the answer is going to be until I see the experts weigh in. I'm wondering if that's going to hamper my ability to be a good reviewer at WP:GAN.

Anyway, my specific question is about http://www.jobfutures.ca/en, which includes the disclaimer: "Materials on this Web site were produced and/or compiled by the Department for the purpose of providing Canadians with direct access to information about the programs and services offered by the Government of Canada. ... Disclaimer: The material herein was prepared under the direction of the department. Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of its contents, the Government of Canada assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or reliability of the contents of this product." You'll see a list of organizations that they relied on for their information at the given link above. Reliable source? If not, where do I find this kind of employment information? (The article I'm reviewing is Mechanical engineering). - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi Dank55. I've seen your reviewing at Cold fusion and honestly, you have no cause for concern. This source is as reliable as anything you will find. One question that we first ask ourselves about a source is: is it fact-checked? In this case, certainly. If a government says that it has made every effort to ensure accuracy, then it has. A further question is: could it be factual but biased? In this case, unlikely. The Canadian government has no interest in presenting biased information about careers. So the source meets RS for fact and interpretation. It is up to you now to ensure that you are using it for an appropriate purpose. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:15, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, thank you! - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:34, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Fail?

Okay guys, where are we? This is about the time I'm supposed to be failing the article if no further improvements are made. It's an important topic, and I'd like to see this make it to GA. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:01, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all your improvements. If it is still lacking and it is not making enough progress, then it should be failed at this time. -Fnlayson (talk) 13:14, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a look again later on today. I'm in class @ the moment. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 18:09, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it looks like a lot of what I wanted to update was updated/changed/reworded already. The remaining items will take more than a couple days for me to gather sources since I'm working on finishing up my summer coursework at the moment. If anyone else wants to improve the article, feel free, but until some of the rest of the material's added, I'd say temp fail GA for now. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 04:14, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Okay, let's fail this one for now, but feel free to bring it back any time. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:22, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I gave a pretty detailed list above of suggested changes; no need to repeat it here, I think. Anyone is welcome to suggest or provide improvements. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:50, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Finite Element Section

The section at the end of the article for finite element seems like it could use some help. Is "MSC MARC MENTAT" really notable software? I'm familiar with both ABAQUS (which was spelled incorrectly before the edit) and ANSYS, but have not heard of this software mentioned. Perhaps we should keep that statement to mainstream software? Should we also mention open source or free alternatives? Finally, the last sentence seems to suggest that heat and fluid flow problems cannot be solved using FEM, but instead require FDM and FVM. I'm not convinced this is the case - but rather FDM is a separate method of solving similar problems. Tevonic (talk) 20:10, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I changed Marc to Nastran, which is far more common. The section is only listing common codes. FDM and FVM are mentioned with thermofluids uses, not structural. -Fnlayson (talk) 20:54, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Maintenance

I don't see much mention on Wikipedia about the role of maintenance. I thought I would find more here. Am I just not finding the info that is out there? 70.250.176.80 (talk) 00:56, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

you are right. more inoformation needs to be put about the huge role of mechanical engineers in maintenance of various systems.Mecha19 (talk) 11:41, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

intro is alright now

hi fnlayson, i think the intro is alright now.

its not complicated and is right to the point.Mecha19 (talk) 16:53, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

You're still missing the point and did not bother to read the Notes above. Discuss on the article talk page as it say. -Fnlayson (talk) 16:55, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

fnlayson i dont know where the notes are?

sorry but i think that the revert before in terms of physics and chemistry was ok but now the current edit that you made is a bit weird :(

the intro is really simple. i searched for your discussion but could not find it. could we discuss it over here.

the intro is really simple actually.

let me know what you think about it :) Mecha19 (talk) 17:30, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

im not quite sure why u removed materials science from the list?

im explaining in a nutshell what mechanical engineering is about, which is physics+materials science.Mecha19 (talk) 17:55, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

You don't seem to get what it is trying to say. The basic principles Mechanical Engineering was based on is stated in the 1st paragraph. The core concepts in ME used today are listed in the 2nd paragraph. -Fnlayson (talk) 19:43, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

yea i got that fnlayson, i want the intro to show that the basic principles of mechanical engineering are physics and materials science. i want the intro to zoom in on what mechanical engineering is all about in just a few sentences. Mecha19 (talk) 07:33, 27 August 2009 (UTC)