<p>Hi everyone.</p>
<p>Im a senior in HS right now and i'm planning on doing a chemical engineering major in college. My only problem is, although i really want to become a chemical engineer, im also very interested in physics, so im not TOTALLY sure that ill want to stick with chE once I start it.</p>
<p>I've heard that its much easier to change majors if you were originally in the engineering college, as opposed to switching into engineering, so if it turns out that once i start a chE program i end up wanting to major in physics, will it be really hard to change majors, or will they not even let me?</p>
<p>if it helps, here is a list of colleges i'm applying to:
URI
RPI
Lehigh
UMD
UIUC
Purdue
U mich
Berkeley (reach)
Cornell (reach)</p>
<p>It’s usually easier to switch from engineering into something else. Engineering and physics share similar classes in the first year. You will learn a lot of interesting physics as a chemical engineering major, anything from thermodynamics to fluid mechanics.</p>
<p>Rest assured that physics is a large part of chemical engineering, so you can have your cake and eat it too. Physics is at the heart of every engineering discipline. Depending on which area of specialty you choose in each discipline, it can be an even larger part than the basic level otherwise involved. For example, I know some chemical engineers go on to work with a lot of physical chemistry while others do not.</p>
<p>Put it this way:</p>
<p>Engineering: you get to study physics as long as it applies to your discipline and learn a few practical abstractions (i.e. the focus is not in the fundamental theories and their derivations) along the way.
Physics: you get to study physics to the level of abstraction (or non-abstraction) where the physics you learn or do problems on is not applicable (as of now, possibly as of always). But it’s still physics.</p>
<p>So,</p>
<p>Engineering student: “I want to apply physics to the real world and work on and study concrete physical things (in some discipline)”.
Physics student: “I want to know what’s physically real and accurate, what’s been said in physics and why is it so.”</p>
<p>Engineering student gains: employability and certainly applicable knowledge in the chosen discipline, knowledge of machines and industrial and technical processes and rules of thumbs/simplifications/abstractions.
Physics student gains: good grasp of physics and intellectual satisfication, a blank paper to draw on with all that physics (i.e. you know a lot, but it’s not as close to application as what engineers studied)</p>
<p>So the gist of all this is that i should stick with engineering because of the employability AND because it also contains a lot of physics in and of itself?</p>
<p>Usually, if you don’t “know” that you e.g. “want to be a physicist” or “have a real passion for theoretical physics”, then what you’re looking for is some form of engineering. I.e. you have an interest in physics, but mostly classical physics and physics that’s not theoretical/hypothetical/experimental/not applied to appliances/machines etc. Physicians study what physics as a scientific discipline is and why, what matter is and how it moves and behaves and how to develop understanding of physics/the natural world. Engineers study how to make practical use of physics and how to build machines, tools and design processes etc.</p>
<p>Mostly we need applications, but we also need physicists to develop and criticize physics itself and to formulate new conjectures and theories. Physicists seek, formulate and discover, engineers seek for practical problems and learn and apply scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. The physics is in some parts the same, so both can either research or apply.</p>
<p>You could major in engineering physics (it’s a real major) and choose chemical engineering as your concentration. The way it works at my school is that an EP major takes all or almost all of the same classes as a real physics major (we cover the four pillars of classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics as well as lab courses) and also takes a large chunk of engineering courses. Which engineering courses you take depends on your choice. At my school you can choose from eight, including chem eng. So you take the core courses of that engineering discipline and some electives.</p>
<p>There is a lot of leeway in how much physics vs. engineering you can do, and it is different at different schools, but it is a real ABET-accredited degree you’ll find at top universities like Cornell and Stanford, not some hokey Devry degree. It is similar to an applied physics degree, and it prepares you well for either employment as an engineer or for grad school in either engineering or physics.</p>
<p>Of course, in any degree, to prepare yourself for the future is something you must take an active role in. It is not just a matter of taking classes, get your diploma, and then “here’s your job/grad school.” You must take internships or participate in undergraduate research, depending on your ultimate goal.</p>
<p>Reactor, the thing is, I do have a passion for theoretical physics and I have wanted to study physics for a while, for example I read books and watch TV shows (ie through the wormhole) about physics. The two main reasons I have pushed myself away from the physics degree direction is because a) im worried that it will be too hard for me to understand (chE is not much easier, but i think it probably is at least a little) and b) i dont want to graduate and not be able to find a decent job in my field.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s engineering or engineering physics (which is kind of the middle road, theoretical while applied, basically it’s what’s called “applied physics”) then.</p>
<p>A pure physics head would probably take all the employment risks, because he/she was so determined by the major itself (and particularly all the “deep” physics concepts, or something in particular) that employment prospects would be secondary (or would be “sorted out later”). Or they would’ve already settled for teaching or grad school (+ possibly undergrad research). On the contrary, engineering students often “pick their job”, whether it’s through a hobby or just a particular interest in a certain field of technology or just a pragmatic “Well I need some kind of job anyways”, prior to deciding on a major.</p>
<p>If you want to understand general relativity, you may be able to do I minor in physics, but major in engineering.</p>
<p>A couple of misconceptions in this thread. Not all physicists are theoretical. In fact, most of us are experimentalists. And lots of us are materials scientists, or biophysicists, or chemical physicists. The second point is that physics majors are not unemployable at all. They can and do compete for jobs in engineering as well as other fields. Perhaps they do not have, as undergraduates, all the specific courses that an engineer might take but the ability to learn and be flexible is a plus.</p>
<p>All that being said, an Engineering Physics degree is an excellent choice because most engineering programs are so full of specific courses that it is hard to take enough electives to get a good grounding in the physics of the 20th and 21st century. At my university, most engineers only take two physics courses and they get NO modern physics or quantum mechanics, much less general relativity. And each kind of engineering program does have physics in it but not the entire breadth of the field. A chemical engineer will have thermodynamics and statistical physics but no classical dynamics, advanced electricity and magnetism or modern physics and quantum mechanics (apart from what you might get in physical chemistry). An electrical engineer will get the advanced E&M but not the classical dynamics, thermo and statistics or quantum mechanics. A mechanical engineer will have plenty of mechanics but none of the other. An engineering physics degree may provide you a bit less of a specific engineering discipline but you will get the entire breadth of the field of physics.</p>
<p>xraymancs that sounds very interesting, and great post, very informative. I might have to think about the engineering physics option…</p>
<p>That’s a little crazy that they don’t see anything like QM at your university. Admittedly, durin my undergrad we only got half a semester of modern physics like that, but that makes sense if you think about it. To really grasp QM you need I be familiar with solving PDEs among other more advanced topics, which the vast majority of engineers won’t touch until much later when, as you said, they are too busy with the meat of their own courses. That said, I’m still grateful for the intro version I had no matter how cursory it was. I remember it being pretty mind-blowing at the time, but now looking back, Schrödinger’s equation is just another wave equation. Pretty neat stuff.</p>
<p>The EE’s do take some modern physics (at the Halliday and Resnick level) and CHEs take physical chemistry but that is the exception. I guess the argument is that modern physics and QM are not really needed for a job in the field and they prefer to fill the curriculum with a lot of specialized engineering courses in their field. I can understand that and it works for most engineering students.</p>
<p>There is always a tension between broadening courses and specific engineering courses which could give a student a leg up on getting a job. I can’t argue with the results, most of our graduates get good jobs and the top ones get into very good graduate programs.</p>
<p>Yeah I have plenty of respect for, as my advisor likes to call it, IIT-Chicago. He got his PhD there and it turned out alright for him I’d say (NAE member). That’s probably why I am surprised that the average engineer there doesn’t even see an intro to QM.</p>