Mechanization is the use of machines to replace manual labour or animals and can also refer to the use of powered machinery to help a human operator in some task. The use of hand powered tools is not an example of mechanization.
The term is most often used in industry. The addition of powered machine tools, such as the steam poweredlathe dramatically reduced the amount of time needed to carry out various tasks, and improves productivity. Today very little construction of any sort is carried out with hand tools. A steam engine is an external combustion heat engine that makes use of the thermal energy that exists in steam, converting it to mechanical work. ... Conventional metalworking lathe In woodturning, metalworking, metal spinning, and glassworking, a lathe is a machine tool which spins a block of material so that when abrasive, cutting, or deformation tools are applied to the block, it can be shaped to produce an object which has rotational symmetry about an axis...
The term is also used in the military to refer to the use of trackedarmoured vehicles, particularly armoured personnel carriers, to move troops that would otherwise have marched or ridden trucks into combat. Mechanization dramatically improved the mobility and fighting capability of infantry. In the armed forces of industrialized countries, all infantry is typically mechanized, with the possible exception of airborne forces. Motorized forces or military units are those that have trucks, or other wheeled, un-armoured transport as an integral part of their organization. ... Caterpillar tracks are large (modular) tracks used on tanks, construction equipment and certain other off-road vehicles. ... An armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) is a military vehicle, equipped with protection against hostile attacks and often mounted weapons. ... The M113, one of the most common tracked APCs, on duty during the Vietnam War. ... Infantry of the Royal Irish Rifles during the Battle of the Somme in World War I. Infantry are soldiers or marines who fight primarily on foot with small arms in organized military units. ... U.S. paratroopers jump into Australia on a military training exercise. ...
Mechanics was studied by a number of ancient Greek scientists, most notably Aristotle, whose ideas dominated the subject until the late Middle Ages, and Archimedes, who made several contributions and whose approach was quite modern compared to other ancient scientists.
In 1905, Albert Einstein showed that Newtonsmechanics was an approximation, valid for cases involving speeds much less than the speed of light; for very great speeds the relativistic mechanics of his theory of relativity was required.
In the quantummechanics developed during the 1920s as part of the quantumtheory, the motions of very tiny particles, such as the electrons in an atom, were explained using the fact that both matter and energy have a dual naturesometimes behaving like particles and other times behaving like waves.