<p>Hello. I'm a senior and would like some of your feed back. I'm interested in ME, particularly biomaterials and nanotechnology. But I get the impression from touring various colleges (GT, UMD) that ME is a field that is already pretty much developed and will be static in the future... in that case, I'm will do EE. Please give me some feedback. Thanks.</p>
<p>Nanotechnology research is more often affiliated with EE than ME (even MEMS). But ME is by no means static. Even civil engineering advances a little here and there, although it’s extremely slow compared to EE. If you end up in nanotech research, you will have to do a lot of self-study in other fields anyway (particularly quantum/electromagnetic/condensed matter physics, chemistry, EE, & materials science). It’s interdisciplinary enough that undergrad major doesn’t matter that much, though as an ME you might get stuck in MEMS while EEs will have more exposure to other areas like solid state electronics and photonics on top of MEMS.</p>
<p>EE has better pay; we all know that your post is a euphemism for that lol</p>
<p>nanotechnology is affiliated with ME with regards to Heat Transfer…which in turn is going to be tied to Mat E for developing materials (I don’t know anything about Bio materials) that have certain thermal energy transport characteristics…it’s quite involved but don’t take my word for it I’m just an undergrad </p>
<p>ME is certainly not developed with respect to Thermal Fluid Sciences, unlike EE with Maxwell Equations, ME’s can’t really even solve a simple problem such as friction loss in a pipe yet analytically, we have equations for problems (navier stokes) but there are no exact solutions and probably never will be…it’s using empirical formations (i.e. Reynolds); which leads to the rising popularity of FEA, and modeling in general (CFD). I might be full of it, like I said I’m just an undergrad (senior) diving into this as we speak. </p>
<p>Then there’s the whole alternative energy economy that’s going down, which is a pretty big deal. (like solar in EE)… and as always more efficient energy processes and machines…I mean it’s evolving now more than ever with respect to energy considering the times we are in right now.</p>
<p>i think that ME is sufficiently developed in CFD and whatnot that it is far more efficient to use the current models/algorithms and crank up the CPU power than to develop more intricate ME models. thus the proper field of study in that domain would be computer science or applied math.</p>
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<p>maxwell’s equations are hard to solve as well . . .</p>
<p>no I mean they ‘can’t’ solve’em, it’s the million dollar challenge, but it was a moot point…anyways EE is a great field, if I wasn’t an ME I would be a EE. both have terrific prospects without question</p>
<p>OK… thanks for all the responses. What might be a good computer language to pick up and try over the summer? (Not too strong in Programming if I decide EE)</p>
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<p>oh you mean that you can’t even solve them exactly in really simple situations? there’s no equivalent of “free space with no charge or current sources” analogue for fluid dynamics?</p>
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<p>There certainly is. Plane Couette flow would be one example. Stokes’ 1st and 2nd Problem. Poisseuille flow, Von Karman pumps… they are all solvable analytically. He probably wouldn’t know many of those or any of them since they don’t talk about them much (if at all) in most undergrad ME curricula or even most AeroE curricula. Even some of the more complicated flows not traditionally solvable analytically can be analytically solved or very closely estimated using various perturbation methods like a matched asymptotic expansion, though you can do the same to Maxwell’s equations.</p>
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<p>MATLAB or Mathematica are good to learn but are costly if you don’t have access to student licenses. If you can’t get those programs for cheap through your college, try out Sage or Octave. If you use Windows, it may be a little tricky to get Sage and Octave to work–both programs have Windows versions, but they are ports. Sage and Octave aren’t primarily developed for Windows.</p>
<p>we’re starting on Plane Couette, Poissueuille flow, Stokes Law, and Navier-Stokes in general right now. though I’m sure we’re just scratching the surface for advanced coursework. </p>
<p>My reference to Maxwell’s is a moot point because my only exposure to this was in elementary physics. vaguely recalling what I remember my professor said few years back</p>