Why is mechanical engineering important to so many areas of life and societal development beyond car building?

Mechanical engineering is applied to a wide range of fields, including home appliances, medical devices, and manufacturing, not just automobile and machine building. It facilitates our daily lives and plays an important role in social development and national competitiveness.

 

In what follows, I’d like to explain mechanical engineering, but first, I’d like to clear up a misconception about mechanical engineering. People usually vaguely think that mechanical engineering is about learning how to build cars or learn about how machines work, but this is half right and half wrong. First of all, the computer I’m writing this article on contains D-RAM semiconductors, which Korea is famous for. On the street, I see people with smartphones in their hands, cars waiting at traffic lights, mannequins wearing the latest fashionable clothes, and in the Apple store next door, people sitting in comfortable chairs listening to music on iPods. Across the street, Starbucks is busy again today, with baristas busily brewing coffee from espresso machines.
Did you notice anything in common between the things I mentioned? Surprisingly, they are all deeply connected to mechanical engineering. To make the body of a car, you need to press a sheet of steel into a mold, and when you design the mold, you need to know what shape the car will be in to be the most beautiful and to minimize air resistance. To make the various parts inside, you need to process the metal parts with many tools, and when you make the engine, you need to calculate how to design it to be more efficient. In the case of D-RAM semiconductors and smartphones, the principles of the semiconductors and the software of the smartphones are the responsibility of people who majored in electrical engineering and physics, but the actual production is the job of mechanical engineers. It is the job of a mechanical engineer to decide which processing method to use and in what order to carry out the process in order to mass-produce the product with maximum efficiency.
Even traffic lights, espresso machines, and clothes that seem far from mechanical engineering require mechanical engineering to mass produce successfully. For example, the Industrial Revolution owes its existence to James Watt’s steam engine, but the textile industry in England would not have developed without the steam-powered looms. As you can see, mechanical engineering is not just about studying a specific machine, such as a car, or how it works. Mechanical engineering is about creating products to change human life based on an understanding of mechanics. Thermodynamics, solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, and kinematics, also known as the four laws of mechanics, are the foundation and important knowledge of mechanical engineering. However, the goal of mechanical engineering is to create useful products, not just understand them. That’s why it’s called mechanical engineering, not mechanical science.
When we look at the various applications of mechanical engineering, we realize how complex the engineering processes are behind the products we use in our daily lives. For example, the electric motors used in household appliances may seem simple, but their design is extremely complex. Electromagnetism and thermodynamics must be applied to increase the efficiency of the motor, solid mechanics must be utilized to reduce vibration and noise, and a deep understanding of manufacturing processes and automation systems is required to optimize the mass production process in the factory. In all of these processes, the role of mechanical engineers is crucial.
Now, let me explain the subjects taught in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Seoul National University. The four mechanics subjects mentioned above are taught in the first and second semesters of the second year of mechanical engineering at Seoul National University. Each subject can be thought of as a more detailed study of the parts of mechanics that have been skimmed over in general physics. You will learn the properties of solids at rest and in motion, fluids (liquids and gases), and their thermodynamic features. These subjects are characterized by the fact that they require a lot of physics and math knowledge to understand them well. In the first year of university, you will learn mechanical drafting and creative engineering design. In the third year, you study design, manufacturing, and practice. In these courses, you’ll work in teams on design projects or build your own robots or products based on your design knowledge. In these subjects, dexterity and teamwork in actually making things are more important than math or physics, so you can say that in mechanical engineering, you learn both engineering knowledge and practical knowledge that you will need in a real company.
In particular, it is very important to develop creative problem-solving skills in mechanical engineering. Students gain practical experience through a variety of projects and learn how to analyze problems from multiple angles and find solutions. For example, when working on research to improve the fuel efficiency of car engines, students must synthesize their knowledge of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, materials science, and more. In this process, students go beyond just learning theory and develop the creativity and analytical skills needed to solve real-world problems.
Next, I’d like to talk about the career paths of mechanical engineering students. Because it’s a field that’s so relevant to real life, it’s not uncommon for students to enter the workforce right out of undergraduate school, but many students go on to graduate school, complete a master’s degree, and then get a job as a researcher. In many cases, they work in the automotive, heavy industry, steel, shipbuilding, and shipbuilding industries, which are directly related to machinery. In recent years, it is not uncommon for students to enter the financial sector or consulting. As Korea has a manufacturing-based export economy, an understanding of mechanical engineering is useful in these industries.
In addition, some students go on to graduate school to study medical devices or take the patent bar exam to become patent attorneys specializing in mechanical patents. Since almost all fields in modern society are related to machines, I think it is a great advantage of mechanical engineering to have less worries about employment. Furthermore, mechanical engineering is actively converging with other fields. For example, mechanical engineering knowledge is playing a big role in fields such as biomedical engineering and robotics. These converging fields will provide even more career options for mechanical engineering graduates and will play an important role in driving the new industries of the future.
I’d like to end this post by talking about the importance of mechanical engineering. What’s the biggest difference between manufacturing in Korea and manufacturing in Germany, Japan, etc. Electrical and electronic technology? No. The biggest difference is the history and level of mechanical engineering in Germany and Korea. Mechanical engineering is not just a field of theory; it is a field that is responsible for manufacturing actual products, so experience and know-how of making many products is very important. Even if you make a single car part, the precision of the part can be very different depending on the level of accumulated mechanical know-how. In the case of an automobile, which has tens of thousands of parts, the accumulation of these differences can lead to a huge difference in quality. In other words, the level of development of mechanical engineering is directly related to the competitiveness of a country. Therefore, if Korea wants to develop into an advanced country at the level of Germany and Japan, we need to further develop mechanical engineering, which is the foundation for other engineering. Young people, let’s major in mechanical engineering!