Why study BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering transcript

00:00

I'm doing mechanical engineering because ever since I was little. I used to love taking things apart and putting them together and I always wanted to know how they worked and how I could get better at it and the way they do it at Solent makes it so much easier for me to understand.

Student of BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, Bethany O'Brien is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

0:18:06

Mechanical Engineering looks at a whole range of different physical processes and machinery concepts. It could be something from a gearbox, to a renewable energy system, to a vehicle or a mode of transport.

Head of Engineering, Jonathan Ridley is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

0:28:18

So you have practical activities at Solent which helps me understand the reasons why the theory works, whereas some uni's don't do that, so it makes it easier.

Student of BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, Bethany O'Brien is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

0:41:07

Solent has a very applied focus to its engineering degrees and in particular Mechanical Engineering. You'll learn the mathematics and the physics that underpin engineering but you'll learn to use them in an applied way to solve real-world problems.

Head of Engineering, Jonathan Ridley is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

0:53:09

Some of the practical activities I've done so far have been to do with engineering materials and hardness testing. We worked in this workshop and created a fan blade and we tested it in a wind tunnel. We had three different materials and we did calculations for the speed that the fan would go in the wind tunnel and we did a competition to see whose was the fastest.

Student of BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, Bethany O'Brien is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

1:20:18

There's a great shortage of graduate engineers not just in the UK, but internationally. You need a particular skill set to be an engineer where you need creativity, mathematical skills, analytical skills and problem-solving skills.

Head of Engineering, Jonathan Ridley is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

1:31:23

We do peer mentoring for first years, run by second years, so it's purely student based and that means first years can come and ask second year's questions at any point and as long as we know the answer we'll be able to help out and if not, we will happily go off and ask questions either via the internet or by our lecturers to be able to help you out, mainly with things like phase tests that you'll be doing for maths, we'll be able to sit there and help you do your first-year maths because we've already passed it and we can help you with the experience of getting it done on time.

Student of BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, Bethany O'Brien is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

2:08:08

Our courses are designed to make sure that you get all of those skills built into the course itself, along with real-world learning and relevant coursework to help you develop the skills that you'll need in the industry.

Head of Engineering, Jonathan Ridley is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

2:17:15

When I leave Solent I'm probably going to want to go into either aerospace engineering or marine engineering, and mechanical engineering links to both of those, so I can easily go into any form of engineering that requires a mechanical degree.

Student of BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, Bethany O'Brien is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

2:38:00

You'll be able to build up a skill set of a whole range of different technical and soft skills which will look good on your CV and will help you to find that all-important job on graduation.

Head of Engineering, Jonathan Ridley is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

2:46:14

I think the things I'd take out from coming to this uni would be the friends that I've made who are pretty much going to be my friends for life at this point because they're amazing people here and also the fact that they've got such great facilities here for you to be able to use and you'll be able to take that into the industry and use industry-level equipment straight off the bat because they have it here.

Student of BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, Bethany O'Brien is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

3:12:04

We have a range of facilities that students can use on a mechanical engineering degree including our advanced manufacturing laboratory, where you can use 3D printers and program robotic systems, and also our materials testing laboratory here, where you can create material samples and test them to establish their performance. We also have an applied mechanics laboratory where you can undertake a range of experiments to help you understand the fundamental physics behind engineering but in a practical and applied way.

Head of Engineering, Jonathan Ridley is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

3:38:00

Some of the things we've been able to use so far have been centre laves, milling machines, drill machines, also hand tools which are very useful and we also have 3D printers and laser cutters and you can print off whatever you'd like, so you can design something at home for your private life and still be able to come here and print it off, you just have to pay like a couple of pounds to be able to pay for the materials. I'm with the engineering society, at the moment we're doing an iron man arm which I find really fun because we're designing the exoskeleton on CAD and then once we have done it on CAD we're going to transfer that onto the actual workshop and working with still to make it and then it also incorporates the electronic students because they'll be doing the electronics for the arm, which includes the speaker to make the sound and the RGB light which will make it pretty basically. So we've got an RGB light, that's going to go here with the speaker in the middle, so when you push your arm out like that like and lift your hand up it will go off and make the sound when it like shoots. So we've got the exoskeleton for the arm down to here so far, and we're working on the hand as well and it's making me happy.

Student of BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, Bethany O'Brien is stood in the engineering workshop at Warsash Maritime School at the St Mary's Campus talking to camera. Soft, guitar music plays in the background.

4:58:17

Soft guitar music plays, then fades out. Cuts to a graphic of animated colourful graphic, that fades down, and Solent University logo fades up as well as text, www.solent.ac.uk. [Video ends]