What do airplanes, helicopters, ships, and submarines have in common? If you said they’re all forms of transportation, you are right.
These things are all rigid, or solid, objects that move through fluids. That is the focus of aerospace and marine engineering. (In engineering, a fluid is not just a liquid like water. It can also be a gas like air.) Aerospace engineers try to answer questions such as: What is the best shape for a plane? How much fuel will it need to reach its destination? How do we design for a zero-gravity environment? Marine engineers — you guessed it — work with travel on and in water.
