Tidying bedrooms is so boring! If only somebody invented a way of cleaning bedrooms for you!

Well, if you were a mechanical engineer, you might! That’s a type of engineering which is almost as old as humans.

Machinery is anything which does a job. Even creating a spear is engineering.

All machines have something in common. They’re designed to do a job. Maybe the job is to vacuum the carpet. Perhaps it’s to screw a lightbulb into a streetlamp or assemble a mobile phone in a factory.

Whatever it is, mechanical engineers design, produce and operate machinery to carry out the work.

Other times they’ll be helping an inventor to create their machine. Mechanical engineers understand the science behind movement and understand the properties of different materials.

They also have to understand how the environment around a machine will affect things. Heat or cold can change how materials behave so a machine which is working with molten steel might have to be built of metals which can withstand hot temperatures.

Machines sent into space have to be built to withstand extremes of temperature and a lot of radiation.

And as there aren’t petrol stations in space, their power supplies have to be carefully designed to use what solar power they can gather. As you can see, different machines have different demands.