Introduction to Mechanical Engineering (saylor.org)

Please note: this legacy course does not offer a certificate and may contain broken links and outdated information. Although archived, it is open for learning without registration or enrollment.

The course is divided into four units. In the first unit, you will learn how mechanical engineering is broadly defined, what mechanical engineers do, and what technical capabilities they have. We will also review some basic principles from mathematics and physics that you will apply in any discipline of engineering. In the second unit, you will learn about the ethical considerations and technical communication skills necessary for engineering work. You will revisit these issues in more detail in several courses within the Mechanical Engineering curriculum. The third unit focuses on computational tools for engineering problems. In Unit 3 you will learn about a specific open source computational environment (Scilab) and the application of that environment to some commonly encountered engineering problems. Finally, in the fourth unit, you will apply some of the concepts you learned throughout the course to a small design project that employs mechanical engineering principles.

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

- define mechanical engineering;

- describe some of the subfields of mechanical engineering;

- distinguish mechanical engineering from other types of engineering;

- describe important components of engineering design and project management;

- employ engineering measurements, units, and conversions;

- demonstrate an understanding of engineering ethics and ethical dilemmas;

- describe intellectual property and copyright issues in an engineering context;

- perform basic oral and written technical communication according to the accepted standards of the mechanical engineering community;

- perform several basic computations in Scilab, including matrix manipulations and nonlinear equation solving;

- perform data analysis and display using Scilab; and

- demonstrate an understanding of all of the above through execution of an engineering design project.