What Is Engineering Mechanics?
Engineering Mechanics is one of the important subjects in the Mechanical Engineering. Engineering Mechanics is all about learning of the concepts and mathematical expressions of the applied forces on the static and dynamic loads.
To understand what is engineering mechanics let us take an example.
Assume a brick and place it on any surface. We can say that the brick is static (static means body at resting position or solid body without any movement) and no force is applied on it. Now, we need to remember the concept called Newton’s First Law of Motion.
Newton’s First Law of Motion: Newton’s first law states that “any body will be at rest until and unless an external force is applied on it”
Now, apply some force on one of the sides of the brick and observe whether the brick is moved or not.
Why the brick is not moved?
Even though we applied the force on the brick, it is not moved because the force we applied on the brick is not enough to overcome the mass of the brick and gravitational force that brick experience. This is the reason why brick is not moved. At this point, we have to remember a concept called Newton’s Second Law of Motion.
Newton’s Second Law of Motion: Newton’s Second Law of Motion states that “the force applied on any body is directly proportional to the mass of the body and acceleration”. The mathematical expression of the Newton’s Second Law of Motion is as follows:
F = m*a
So, it is understood that to make the brick to move, the force we apply on the brick should be greater than the multiplication of the mass and the acceleration. By this example we understood the importance of force, mass, gravitational force, and acceleration.
So, how do we know amount of force that we need to apply to move brick and on what direction should the force need to apply to move the brick, and what other forces experience by brick are explained by the Engineering Mechanics.
In Engineering Mechanics, we learn all the unknown, unseen forces that a body experience. We do even analyze them with Free Body Diagrams. As this is engineering level, the applications and analysis will be up to the mark.
We will learn lot of concepts, mathematical expressions, and applications in the mechanical engineering mechanics to analyze the forces in machines, components, devices, and automobiles. We do even find this engineering mechanics subject in the field of Civil Engineering because they also need to study about the materials, columns, buildings too.
So simply, we can say that the engineering mechanics is a necessary fundamental subject in the physical area (it means where the physical components are involved). We not only learn the fundamentals of engineering mechanics but also we will take it to the advanced level in the upcoming subjects like Strength of Materials, and Theory of Machines.
Learning engineering mechanics will not limit to one semester, it will helpful in the upcoming semesters in Mechanical Engineering.