Mechanical engineering with differential gears. The medieval Chinese horologist and engineer Su Song (1020–1101 AD) incorporated an escapement mechanism into his astronomical clock tower two centuries before escapement devices were found in medieval European clocks. He also invented the world's first known endless power-transmitting chain drive. During the Islamic Golden Age (7th to 15th century), Muslim inventors made remarkable contributions in the field of mechanical technology. Al-Jazari, who was one of them, wrote his famous "Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices" in 1206 and presented many mechanical designs. Al-Jazari is also the first known person to create devices such as the
Mechanical energy swing because of the work done by the pendulum to oppose these non-conservative forces. That the loss of mechanical energy in a system always resulted in an increase of the system's temperature has been known for a long time, but it was the amateur physicist James Prescott Joule who first experimentally demonstrated how a certain amount of work done against friction resulted in a definite quantity of heat which should be conceived as the random motions of the particles that comprise matter. This equivalence between mechanical energy and heat is especially important when considering colliding objects. In an elastic collision,