<p>Hopefully, that title explains a lot. I'm a freshman that is torn between EE and physics (<em>not theoretical physics</em>). I want to apply the knowledge that I gain from physics to something practical. With that said, it sounds like I should just do engineering. But the problem is the topics I'm interested in has a very physics-y flavor. Many of the topics I find fascinating are applied quantum mechanics and optics. I've read quite a bit about photonics, microdevices, nano-instrumentation, etc. </p>
<p>I don't care about having a title "Physicist" or whatever. I also understand that I need a PhD to "do" physics. Although, I want to be a physicist hiding under the title Engineer, with perhaps a Master's degree in the end. </p>
<p>These fields are obviously a specialized branch of EE, so would a EE with certain physics classes be the best education package or physics with a couple EE classes? </p>
<p>Note: I'm leaning EE for the job opportunities within the entire field. According to AIP - Figure</a> 2a only 32% of physics grads end up in engineering. It would be quite frustrating to not even end up in a technical field after graduating. So engineering is feeling like the safest bet.</p>
<p>I am in the exact same situation as the OP, it is almost funny how similar this is.</p>
<p>Quantum optics and photonics really strike my interests, but at my school it seems the EE program does not place very heavy emphasis in research over optics. I would think a combo of EE/Physics courses would be a better option, but I don’t see how this is possible at my school. We don’t even have engineering physics either. </p>
<p>So all this to say, I totally understand where you are coming from. It is something I am very torn over.</p>
<p>if you really want to get into the details of quantum mechanics, you should probably major in physics. if you decide to major in ee, make sure you take classical mechanics BEFORE you take quantum. </p>
<p>the problem is if/when you end up working, and you aren’t working in a research setting, your knowledge of quantum mechanics is a level of abstraction above what is actually going on/what you need.</p>
<p>and if you have a physics degree and have some EE class in your background, you’ll probably be fine. not everyone physics major wants to go into engr, so i wouldnt let that statistic scare you.
(if they did want to go into engr, they would be engr majors)</p>
<p>This might be strange but realistically I know that even if I tailor a degree to fit exactly into the perfect package I still might not end up in the desired field. That’s where the EE degree will become vital and could possibly get me a job in another field. Where as a physics degree with only certain optics EE classes will seem to pigeon hole me pretty bad. </p>
<p>Can anyone tell me if it’s possible to take some physics classes in place of EE classes if I were to major in EE? For instance, take physics E&M instead of EE E&M. Would this approach help for photonics and optics in the end?</p>
<p>Another question: what fields in EE would <em>specifically</em> require more knowledge of Physics than EE? Or is this just an approach to the academic material? The reason I ask this is because I’ve read quite a bit from other forums that the physics trained people still up under the title Engineer. </p>
<p>Finally, I know this question will sound <em>very</em> strange but is there anyway to ensure that if I major in EE I don’t lose the “science” approach to learning? I’ve met some upper class engineering majors and they seem to not give a crap about where a certain equation or experiment came from. They just use it and move on. I do want to make things but that approach to a subject really scares me for my own values.</p>
Potentially, but it depends on your school. At mine, the E&M courses are virtually identical anyway. (But I don’t think an EE can take the physics one because the EE version emphasizes applications a bit more).
Also, we have a science breadth that we have to cover, and assuming yours does too, you could just use physics to cover it.</p>
<p>Johnson181 quote **Potentially, but it depends on your school. At mine, the E&M courses are virtually identical anyway. (But I don’t think an EE can take the physics one because the EE version emphasizes applications a bit more).
Also, we have a science breadth that we have to cover, and assuming yours does too, you could just use physics to cover it. **</p>
<p>Ok, well what about doing an internship vs doing research with a professor? My school is top 20 in physics and there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on here. One of the groups is called “Quantum Mechanics Engineering” group so would it be of benefit to focus on research with a EE degree? Or do a physics degree with an engineering internship/co-op? </p>
<p>All in all, I’m trying to hear someone on this forum say “Physics majors aren’t about learning things that we’ll never use” and “I have a physics degree and I work within certain EE field.” Statistics from the AIP seem to lean to physics majors just end up in a vast amount of areas with about 50/50 chance not doing anything science/engineering related. Also my physics major friends only talk about grad school and becoming professors which is <em>not</em> the route I’m going. Furthermore, my physics friends tend to be more math than engineering. </p>
<p>Let me give an example of how I would approach a certain topic. If I was working within a particle accelerator group I would want to be the one designing and developing the accelerator itself. Running through experiments and seeing if the accelerator is doing what we need it to do. I wouldn’t want to be the one gathering the data from the experiment and figuring out how the new found particle reacted. While the second job would be exciting I know there’s only a handful of people in the world that are actually <em>doing</em> that job. I would much rather just be surrounded by physicists/scientists as an engineer myself and annoy them with questions during work. Hahah =)</p>
<p>You are absolutely right that many BS physics do not go into engineering. Because with the level of abstraction they work with and their programming skills, they do finance instead. PhD level physicists can be “real” quants. Regular BS physics can be programmers or low level market analysts.</p>
<p>major in EE and make the following changes:
consider taking physics e&m over ee (more theoretical = more udnerstanding)
take as much quantum as you can. and maybe a solid state/condensed matter physics class after that.
before taking quantum, make sure you take classical/analytical mechanics. </p>
<p>and optics (not photonics?) is a weird field. yes optical waves are technically electromagnetic waves, but they dont seem to be treated as such (can someone correct me?). and by optics, i mean, “hey let’s look at the stars better with a telescope of some kind”. photonics is more lasers and fiber optics stuff.
im not really sure which field you’re interested in.</p>
<p>Materials Science & Engineering will have a bit of overlap with the stuff you’re interested in, though likely only at the upper level or in more cutting edge research.</p>
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<p>This is the sort of job you’d get at a national lab. I suggest trying to find personnel directories or talk to non-faculty staff scientists at your school to find out what sort of career path they’ve had. Good places to look for people like that are microscopists and people involved in running centers such as clean rooms and the such.</p>
<p>I don’t know if there is a clear line separating the labels ‘optics’ and ‘photonics’, but I think I can try to differentiate between the two. Preface each sentence in the following paragraph with ‘I tend to think that’:</p>
<p>Optics tries to describe light by using simpler models (light as rays and light as scalar valued waves) than in the full vectorial wave Maxwell’s equations. Solving Maxwell’s equations can be hard to do in a lot of situations and often the level of detail it gives you is not really needed. </p>
<p>Photonics delves into the full wave Maxwell equations because it often has to. Why? Photonics tends to go into how light behaves if it is confined in a small cavity, like in a small diode laser, and how it behaves when guided in a pipe, like in an optical fiber. To describe how light behaves in these situations you need to use Maxwell’s equations. Optics is more about how light propagates in free space, and in these situations, often it suffices to use the ray or scalar wave treatment of light.</p>
<p>This is all speculation and extrapolation from my one experience as an undergraduate in one program in electrical engineering: </p>
<p>Probably most of your classmates in engineering will be like that (an engineering degree is kind of like a professional degree after all) but I don’t think that the courses necessarily are presented in that way. </p>
<p>I think that if you are attending a top rated program there is more of a chance that the courses will be more theoretical and that the professors will present the subject more like a ‘here’s why this is important and where it comes from’ class and less like a ‘here’s what you need to know’ class. </p>
<p>My experience in a highly ranked EE program is that most of the classes are of the first type. The few classes that are like the second type are kind of like that by necessity because sometimes the background physics or whatever are just too hard for that level of class.</p>
<p>haha no. i’m an undergraduate student. while i think i am saying the truth, because im an undergrad i may be full of crap. : )</p>
<p>photonics has a lot of cool physics. one cool area of photonics is semiconductor lasers, which today are used as the light sources for fiber optic networks, of which one huge important one is the internet. in these devices, the interaction between electrons in a semiconductor material and the electromagnetic field are used to create a strong source of light. the relevant physics are electromagnetism (light waves) and quantum mechanics (electron waves). </p>
<p>other areas of EE, and not just photonics, have a lot of physics as well. the guys who design antennas and electronic devices also use physics quite a bit.</p>