<p>I've been researching about majors and what not and well engineering majors keep on coming up whilst look for suitable majors for a maths/science oriented student. I LOVE maths, biology, chemistry but dislike physics although it always been my best science tied with chemistry. Chemical and biomedical engineering seem interesting and I do love the idea of building, designing etc but am not sure about whether it'd be a smart idea to consider majoring in a discipline of engineering if I don't enjoy physics. </p>
<p>I have watched a couple of physics lectures from the MIT course website and they don't seem half as bad as I'd imagined hmmm. </p>
<p>TL;DR Can one enjoy engineering classes if they dislike physics? How much do high school physics classes differ from college classes? And would you recommend I consider majoring in chemical/biomedical engineering? </p>
<p>Physics is fundamental in engineering, so you might want to reconsider your major. </p>
<p>Figure out why you dislike physics. If the reason of your dislike is from the subject and not because of other influences (bad teacher, bad class, etc), then I don’t think it should be for you </p>
<p>College classes will be a whole lot harder. You seem to have a passion for chemistry / biomed so look into the free online lessons on those engineering classes and see if you like it. </p>
<p>I found that basic physics was a little “dry” for my taste. It got a lot more interesting in engineering when you started to apply the principles you learned in physics.</p>
<p>You don’t have to love physics to be a good engineer. You do need to understand it, which it seems you do. As you note, there are many branches of engineering where the knowledge of physics isn’t the primary component of the field.</p>
<p>I did find that college physics was a lot more interesting than high school physics but that was due in great part to who was lecturing the class. Victor Weisskopf was the head of the MIT physics department and nearing retirement. He decided to lecture a term of freshman physics. On Fridays, he would end lecture early and field any question as long as it had something to do with physics. I don’t remember any of the questions and answers but I remember what a great person he was and how he could make physics very interesting. Many others must have found it the same. You could always find a seat in the lecture hall on Mondays and Wednesdays, but standing room only on Fridays. Even students who weren’t taking physics would sometimes attend the Friday lecture just to listen to Prof. Weisskopf.</p>
<p>I personally hated physics classes. I love physics especially quantum mechanics, but academia is its own monster. I think you can do well. For engineers, physics is like the alphabet. Its mundane to learn the fundamental, but once you have that down, you can make words which in turn make sentences which develop into articulated thoughts. Say you want to make a car? How do you do it? Physics will tell you. </p>
<p>Its important to note that a lot you learn in school you won’t use in the industry. Like in every other topic, you will learn stuff, but there isn’t much use for it. Same thing with physics. I took 3 courses of physics in college, but in my field, I really only use a few sections of one course, which is fluid dynamics. Most of my applications are from the math side, more specficially differential equations. I’m always using laplace transforms. So for me, I use more math than physics (although physics is just applied math, but you get the point) it could be same for you</p>