Reverse engineering is the act of taking an object apart to see how it works. This is primarily done to analyze and gain knowledge of how something works, but is often used to duplicate or improve an object. Many things can be reverse engineered, including software, physical machines, military technology, and even biological functions related to how genes work. The purpose of reverse engineering is to find out how an object or system works. There are a number of reasons to do this. Reverse engineering can be used to learn how something works and recreate an object or create a similar object with improvements added.