All articles starting with M
36,687 articles
Mechanical activation
Mechanical activation is a solid-state processing method that uses milling or grinding to store energy in solids as defects, raising reactivity in later chemical steps.
Mechanical advantage
Mechanical advantage is the ratio of the load a machine overcomes to the effort applied at its input, so an MA of 5 lifts a 500 N load with 100 N.
Mechanical advantage device
A mechanical advantage device is a mechanism, typically a simple machine like a lever, pulley, or inclined plane, that multiplies input force at the cost of greater distance.
Mechanical alloying
Mechanical alloying, developed by John S. Benjamin at INCO in 1970, is a solid state powder metallurgy method that blends elemental powders in a high-energy ball mill.
Mechanical Animals
Mechanical Animals is Marilyn Manson's third studio album, released September 15, 1998 on Nothing/Interscope. A glam-rock concept album built on the Omega alien persona, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200.
Mechanical biological treatment
Mechanical biological treatment (MBT) is a waste management method combining mechanical sorting of mixed waste with biological treatment, diverting waste from landfill by recovering recyclables, producing fuel, and stabilizing organics.
Mechanical calculator
A mechanical calculator, or calculating machine, performs arithmetic using gears and drums rather than electronics; first built in 1623, it was displaced by electronic calculators in the 1960s.
Mechanical cloaking
Mechanical cloaking is the design of a coating or structure that makes a defect in a material undetectable in its elastic response, as if it were not there.
Mechanical computing in metamaterials
Mechanical computing in metamaterials is an approach to information processing in which architected materials perform computations, with forces and deformations as inputs and bistable cells implementing logic gates and memory.
Mechanical counterpressure suit
A mechanical counterpressure suit, also known as a Space Activity Suit, is a proposed skintight elastic spacesuit protecting against vacuum without gas pressurization; none has flown.
Mechanical debridement
Mechanical debridement is the nonselective removal of dead and viable tissue from wounds by physical force, using wet-to-dry gauze, irrigation, or pulsatile lavage; it is the most commonly used debridement technique in the USA.
Mechanical energy
Mechanical energy is the sum of a system's kinetic and potential energies, measured in joules; friction converts it into thermal energy, but it is conserved otherwise.
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is the branch of engineering that applies physics and mathematics to design machines and mechanical systems, from turbines and generators to refrigeration and air-conditioning systems.
Mechanical equilibrium
Mechanical equilibrium is the state of a rigid body in which linear and angular acceleration are zero, so it moves at constant velocity or stays at rest.
Mechanical equivalent of heat
The mechanical equivalent of heat, or Joule's equivalent, is the number of units of mechanical work equivalent to one unit of heat, determined by James Prescott Joule's paddle-wheel experiments of the 1840s.
Mechanical explanations of gravitation
Mechanical explanations of gravitation are superseded physical theories explaining gravity through contact mechanisms, chiefly the vortex theories of Descartes and Huygens and Le Sage's pushing corpuscles.
Mechanical face seal
A mechanical face seal is a device that seals fluid where a rotating shaft enters a stationary enclosure, most commonly on pumps, mixers, agitators, and compressors.
Mechanical fuse
A mechanical fuse is a deliberately weak drivetrain component, typically a shear pin or slip clutch, that breaks or slips under overload, protecting more expensive components downstream.
Mechanical harvesting
Mechanical harvesting: collecting crops by machine using cutting, shaking, or picking mechanisms instead of hand labor. Covers grain combines, cotton pickers, tree shakers, economics, fruit damage trade-offs, and the shift toward robotic harvesting.
Mechanical hemolytic anemia
Mechanical hemolytic anemia: red blood cells destroyed by shear stress and turbulence in thrombotic microangiopathy, malignant hypertension, prosthetic heart valves, and cardiac devices, producing schistocytes and intravascular hemolysis.
Mechanical impedance
Mechanical impedance is the frequency-dependent ratio of applied sinusoidal force to vibration velocity at a point in a mechanical system, the mechanical counterpart of electrical impedance in AC circuit theory.
Mechanical lagophthalmos
Mechanical lagophthalmos is incomplete eyelid closure caused by physical obstruction such as proptosis, scarring, ectropion, or symblepharon, distinct from paralytic lagophthalmos; ICD-10 code H02.22, treated with lubricants, taping, tarsorrhaphy, and scar release.
Mechanical Marie (機械じかけのマリー)
Mechanical Marie (機械じかけのマリー) is a Hana to Yume romantic comedy manga by Akimoto Aki (6 volumes plus the Marie+ sequel) about Marie, a fighter posing as a robot maid for misanthropic heir Arthur; a 12-episode TV anime by Zero-G × Lieber aired from October 2025.
Mechanical memory in disordered solids
Mechanical memory in disordered solids is the ability of amorphous solids, such as sheared glasses, to store readable memories of past strain amplitudes under cyclic deformation.
Mechanical metamaterial
A mechanical metamaterial is an artificial material whose mechanical properties come from a designed internal architecture, typically periodic unit cells, rather than chemical composition, enabling properties like negative stiffness.
Mechanical metamaterial logic
Mechanical metamaterial logic is the use of architected materials whose bistable unit cells snap between states to perform Boolean operations, store bits, and transmit signals mechanically.
Mechanical metamaterials with negative dynamic mass density
Mechanical metamaterials with negative dynamic mass density are engineered composites whose effective mass density turns negative near local resonances even though every constituent has positive mass.
Mechanical metamaterials with negative stiffness
Mechanical metamaterials with negative stiffness are architected materials whose effective stiffness is negative over part of their deformation range, assisting deformation; they require constraint by positive-stiffness components to remain stable.
Mechanical neural networks
A mechanical neural network is a metamaterial of tunable beams whose stiffness acts like neural-network weights; the concept was proposed in 2022 by UCLA researchers.
Mechanical Orchard
Mechanical Orchard, formerly P3 Systems, Inc., is a San Francisco startup founded in 2022 by former Pivotal CEO Rob Mee that uses AI tooling to rebuild enterprises' aging mainframe applications as cloud-hosted code.