What are the current foundational research questions in mechanical engineering?
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Is there a specific part of mechanical engineering?
It's barely a single field: Thermo, fluid dynamics, structural engineering, dynamics and controls, robotics - basically "engineering while atoms that don't involve chemical or biological reactions."
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I'm sort of asking the original question to understand how to answer this question. I realized I don't understand the field's shape, and I imagined that by reading about the foundational questions, I'd be able to see some of the decomposition.
I have never been able to find a decent book about it. Books with "M.E." in the title are usually very abstract and not really useful for understanding how mechanical devices around us work and where they come from.
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You'll want to look into 'Mechanism Design.' Unfortunately, academic mechanical engineering hasn't cared about mechanism design for decades.
A starting place for books
google.com/search?q=mecha
or watch How Its Made: youtube.com/channel/UCELt4
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