How would you define a marvel? Is it something that makes you wonder, “How did they do that?” For me a marvel is synonymous with wonder and is something unique and astonishing. Often we associate marvels with superlatives, such as “the tallest”, “the biggest”, “the longest”, “the oldest”, “the highest” and so on.

Just look around you. Everything around you is mechanical engineering marvel. Refrigerator in your house shows a good example of engineering thermodynamic. Water in your house is coming because of hydraulic systems, and forces. The chair you are sitting on, the remote in your hand, everything is made by specific process, that is production engineering. Automobile you are using is a great example of internal combustion engines and power transmission. Your house is a great example of structural engineering, how they are build and how can they sustain lots of loads without failure. Electricity you are using is generated by huge turbines, which is another engineering marvel.

SERIOUSLY EVERYTHING..!

From your clothes to spacecraft's body everything is made by a specific material because of their special properties, that is material science. There are many great and amazing Mechanical Engineering projects all over the world. With this purpose in mind, let's look at some of the most impressive mechanical engineering wonders and construction projects throughout time. Here we countdown the ones that transcend time and continue to impress and inspire new generations.

1. New Horizons

World’s Fastest Unmanned Spaceship New Horizons Probe

Launch date - January 19, 2006, 19:00 UTC

New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe that was launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by S. Alan Stern, the spacecraft was launched in 2006 with the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow. It is the fifth of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity that will allow them to leave the Solar System. New Horizons planetary probe is finally about to reach Pluto soon after a nine-year journey. Launched by NASA, this modern and sophisticate spacecraft uses novel technologies to cut down its travel time. It is the fastest spacecraft ever to leave the planet Earth and is travelling at a speed of about 31,000 miles per hour.

On January 19, 2006, New Horizons was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station by an Atlas V rocket directly into an Earth-and-solar escape trajectory with a speed of about 16.26 kilometers per second (58,536 km/h; 36,373 mph). After a brief encounter with asteroid 132524 APL, New Horizons proceeded to Jupiter, making its closest approach on February 28, 2007, at a distance of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles). The Jupiter flyby provided a gravity assist that increased New Horizons' speed; the flyby also enabled a general test of New Horizons' scientific capabilities, returning data about the planet's atmosphere, moons, and magnetosphere.

The spacecraft structure is bigger than necessary to allow for mass distribution and shielding from radiation of the RTG. Inside, the structure is painted black to allow radiative heat transfer and add warmth to the spacecraft. New Horizons has 16 thrusters – four larger ones for trajectory corrections and 12 smaller ones for attitude control and spin-up or spin-down maneuvers.

2. Apollo 10 CSM

Manned Spacecraft Apollo 10 CSM

Launch date - May 18, 1969, 16:49:00 UTC

Apollo 10 was the fourth manned mission in the United States Apollo space program, and the second (after Apollo 8) to orbit the Moon. Launched on May 18, 1969, it was the F mission: a "dress rehearsal" for the first Moon landing, testing all of the components and procedures, just short of actually landing. The Lunar Module (LM) followed a descent orbit to within 8.4 nautical miles (15.6 km) of the lunar surface, at the point where powered descent for landing would normally begin. Its success enabled the first landing to be attempted on the Apollo 11 mission two months later.

Like Apollo 11, it had flight-experienced crew and its Lunar Module came to within 8.4 nautical miles of the lunar surface. Apollo 10, however, has a record to its name too. In 2002, it set up a record of highest speed attained by a manned vehicle during the return from the Moon. According to the 2002 Guinness World Records, Apollo 10 set the record for the highest speed attained by a manned vehicle: 39,897 km/h (11.08 km/s or 24,791 mph) on May 26, 1969, during the return from the Moon. The mission's call signs included the names of the Peanuts characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy, which became Apollo 10's semi-official mascots. Peanuts creator Charles Schulz also drew some mission-related artwork for NASA.

3. Bagger 288 (Excavator 288)

World’s Largest Land Vehicle

Bagger 288 (Excavator 288), built by the German company Krupp for the energy and mining firm Rheinbraun, is a bucket-wheel excavator or mobile strip mining machine. Bagger 288 or Excavator 288 weights 1,35,000 tons and is the largest land vehicle in the world. Thus bucket-wheel excavator was made by the German company Krupp for the energy and mining firm Rheinbraun to remove overburden from coal mining at the Hamback stripmine. Bagger 288 can excavate 2,40,000 tons of coal or 2,40,000 cubic metres of overburden daily (which is comparable to a football field dug about 30 metre deep).

When its construction was completed in 1978, Bagger 288 superseded Big Muskie as the heaviest land vehicle in the world, at 13,500 tons. It took five years to design and manufacture, and five years to assemble with total cost reaching $100 million. In 1995, it was itself superseded by the slightly heavier Bagger 293 (14,200 tons). NASA's Crawler-Transporter still remains the largest self-powered land vehicle in the world, since bucket-wheel excavators are powered by an external power source, and the Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60s hold the title of largest land vehicle of any type by physical dimensions.

4. LTM 11200-9.1

World's Strongest and Tallest Telescopic Crane

The LTM 11200-9.1 delivers maximum load capacity and one of the longest telescopic booms in the world. Various lattice extensions are also available. The Y telescopic boom guying delivers significant increases in load capacity. The 9-axle chassis includes active, speed-dependent rear-axle steering developed by Liebherr. Liebherr LTM 11200-9.1 is undoubtedly the strongest mobile crane in the world. It can carry as many as 12 adult Blue Whales at once (weighing around 1,200 tons in all). It can also carry as many as three of the world’s biggest wind turbines easily – which are 650 feet tall and weigh around 354 tons).

Unit	Metric
Max. load capacity	1,200 t
Telescopic boom	100 m
Max. hoist height	188 m
Max. radius	136 m
Number of axles	9

LTM itself weights over 220 tons. The crane has a 6-cylinder 240 kW engine as well as a 500 kW engine for the 9-axle carrier that is 65 foot tall. When the crane is shifted from site-to-site, its 100-ton boom (about as long as the truck itself) is shipped separately.

5. Magnetic Hybrid Motorbike

Prototype of a new electric motorbike carrying a hybrid magnetic motor

A Japanese vehicle manufacturer unveiled the prototype of a new electric motorbike carrying a hybrid magnetic motor, which can run almost noiselessly up to 180 kilometers (112 miles) on one charge. Tokyo-based Axle Corporation says that the battery of the next-generation electric vehicle motorbike can be charged at home, in the same way as a cellular phone. It takes a little over 6 hours to fully charge the battery, and the vehicle’s maximum speed is capable of reaching 150 kilometers per hour (93 miles per hour).

The energy efficiency is very high thanks to the magnetic motor, a hybrid between a electromagnet and a permanent magnet, and is a masterpiece. The motor, SUMO(from super moto), is built inside bike’s rear wheel, and the manufacturers said that is seven times more cost efficient than gas-powered scooters. The company plans to start selling a mini-scooter version of the magnetic-powered bike in 2007.

6. Nano Engine

Nano Engine that Works on a Single Atom

They Built the Single-Atom Engine And It Actually Works. The engine has the same working principles as the well known (combustion) car engine. The most efficient engine of the world is the one that runs on a single atom! This nano-engine designed by Johannes Roßnagel's is a four-stroke one. It means that it compresses and heats, and then expands and cools – again and again to transform changes in temperature into mechanical energy. Roßnagel proposed the theoretical design of his one-atom engine in a scientific paper back in 2014. Now that he's finally built the thing, it works almost exactly as he said it would.

First, the team traps a single atom in a cone of electromagnetic energy from which the atom cannot escape. You can think of this cone as essentially a tightly-fit engine housing. For this experiment the researchers trapped a lonely calcium-40 atom, but this is an arbitrary detail as pretty much any atom would do. Roßnagel's team then points two lasers toward each end of the cone. The laser pointing at the sharp end of the cone heats the atom, and the laser pointing at the base cools the atom via a process called Doppler cooling. Roßnagel is an Experimental Physicist at the University of Mainz in Germany. His engine does not use internal combustion and is less than a micrometer in length – making it the tiniest engine of the World. According to the Roßnagel, this engine can attain the efficiency which can surpass the Carnot Limit – the cap of engine efficiency limit according to the Laws of Thermodynamics.

7. Robo-Fly

Robo-Fly may soon be used in Rescue Operations

Robo-fly is a tiny, insect-sized robot designed by Harvard scientists. RoboBee or Robo-Fly weighs less than a gram and has superfast electric muscles that allow it to flaps its wings 120 times per second and make tethered flight. It is made from carbon fibre. After 12 years of research by the Robotics team, this micro-robotics wonder work came into being after solving two key technical challenges – building a sub-millimeter scale for precise and efficient measurements, and creating artificial muscles for the fly.

From large military unmanned aircraft to cheap and cheerful quadcopters, drones are becoming increasingly diverse. Now, a robot the size of a fly is set to become the world’s smallest. The robo-fly has a carbon fibre body weighing just 106mg - a fraction of a gram - and a pair of flapping wings powered by electronic ‘muscles.’ With just a 3 cm wingspan, it is the smallest device to fly like an insect. Right now, the power supply and instructions to the bee are provided by a tiny tether on board its body. The research is going on to make the fly capable of making independent decisions and how to give it a viable power supply.

8. Dronies – the Nano Drones

Dancing Dronies: NexGen Drone Technology

Although drones are usually associated with high-tech uses, a trio of crowdfunded entrepreneurs hopes to humanize the use of UAVs through the power of dance. World’s tiniest flying machines, dronies or nano drones are autonomous flying quadcopters. They can fly and move in formation indoors. Thet can also dance in sync without the use of external sensors or on-board infrared sensors. Produced by Drovionics, drone avionics attracts much interest from the industry. From delivering parcels to providing security cover to aerially inspect damage in pipelines, dronies have many potential uses. They can even operate independently of continuous human supervision.

Marketed as the “most simplified versions of autonomous flyers that do not need external sensors, GPS or even onboard IR/RGB sensors,” a Dronie is a tiny quadcopter that can dance in the air to synchronized music from a smartphone “base station.” Dronies are designed for indoor flying right now with a 2.4 GHz transmitter with a signal strength that extends up to 30 metres. The present version of dronies has a recommended distance of 2-10 metres between the controller and the dancing dronies. The coordinated flying and navigation abilities of dronies allow choreography on the basis of 6-axis aerial acrobatics.

9. The Freedom Ship

A Floating City

Freedom Ship is a floating city project initially proposed in the late 1990s. It was so named because of the "free" international lifestyle facilitated by a mobile ocean colony, though the project would not be a conventional ship, but rather a series of linked barges. The Freedom Ship is a floating city that is expected to materialize soon. This mile-long ship will have buildings that are about 25 stories tall stacked close to each other. It is envisioned to be the largest man-made structure on Earth and there are talks that it could also be made into an independent country. The Freedom ship is designed to be 4,500 feet long, 750 feet wide and 350 feet high. It would be over 4 times longer than the Queen Mary.

The Freedom Ship project envisions a 1317 m (0.818 mi)-long integrated city with condominium housing for 50,000 people, an airstrip to accommodate turboprop aircraft, duty-free shopping and other facilities, large enough to require rapid transit. The complex would circumnavigate the globe continuously, stopping regularly at ports of call. This luxury city is not going to be a cruise ship but a place to live, work or visit which will continuously go around the globe covering the coastal regions of the world. It will have an extensive duty-free international shopping mall, residential space, schools, banks, hotels, offices, warehouses and light manufacturing and assembly enterprises too. The airport on the top deck of the ship can serve small private commercial aircraft which can carry up to about 40 passengers each.

10. The giant mechanical spider -La Princesse

La Princesse is a 15-metre giant mechanical spider weighing over 37 tons. It was designed & operated by French performance art company La Machine. The spider was showcased in Liverpool, England, as part of the 2008 European Capital of Culture celebrations. In 2009, it was on display in Yokohama, Japan, as part of Yokohama’s 150th anniversary of it’s port opening.

On 3 September the spider appeared for the first time on the side of Concourse House, a derelict tower block in Lime Street, which had been designed by architect Richard Seifert and was scheduled for demolition. On the morning of 5 September, the spider moved to the Albert Dock, and it became active at lunchtime, moving in a small area and spraying the public with water. In the evening the spider travelled from the Albert Dock to the Cunard Building, via Salthouse Dock. The spider was accompanied by musicians who played specially composed music by Dominique Malan, the special effects were designed by Thierry Loridant and the costumes were designed by Gaelle Choveau.

OMG..! What was that?
Incredible Machines!
Biggest..!

TOP TEN TECHNOLOGIES, 1900-2000

With far less fanfare than the Nobel announcements this week, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) unveiled its list of the top 10 greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. Topping the list was the Apollo Space Program, an undertaking by NASA that consisted of 28 missions and at its peak employed almost 400,000 people.

ASME came up with the list by way of surveying members and tallying 1,400 responses. The remaining nine achievements considered major contributions to engineering progress and economic and social development during the past 100 years appear in the list below.

• Apollo Space Program
• Power Generation
• Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing Technology
• Bioengineering
• Codes and Standards
• Agricultural Mechanization
• Integrated Circuit Mass-Production
• Air Conditioning and Refrigeration
• Airplane
• Automobile

Every engineer will have a different opinion on the most impressive creations, but these ten are widely considered the greatest. However, there are many other engineering creations that have impressed the world, such as Biggest aircraft – Antonov An-225 Mriya, Biggest rail gun – Schwerer Gustav, Largest tunnel boring machine – Bertha, Biggest dump truck – BelAZ 75710, Biggest ship – MSC Oscar, etc.

Over the centuries and decades, we have seen many great as well as breathtaking mechanical engineering projects that have become historic machines. Engineering has created some of the biggest structures in the world, and are a showcase of our ability to construct a unique vision. The future is bright for engineering, as advanced technology will pave the way for even more stunning creations.

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