<p>I'm an entering freshman to UCLA this fall, and I'm a Mechanical Engineering major. Now I love physics, Maths, and Chemistry, and im fairly confident my theory will be good, but I'm afraid with mechanical/Aerospace or electrical engineering I don't have the practical skills for all the construction bits, like I don't know if I'll be good at the lab bits/ building stuff u know?? So I'm considering switching to Chemical, but Chemical eng doesn't have much physics in it so I feel a bit hesitant cos I love physics haha. What should I do?? Is Chen Eng with a physics minor or something a good/practical idea? Please help!</p>
<p>ChE has plenty of physics in it, actually. They’re just more related to ChE work than MechE work.
Don’t worry though, more often than not the first years of engineers are 95% identical and pretty much involve 1 year of Chem/Physics/Calculus/English/Humanities/Intro classes as your curriculum. Only the intro classes are not interchangeable, so it’ll be relatively easy to switch.</p>
<p>Oh that’s great, can u give me examples of how physics is used in chemE? Cos I love it and the physics thing is the only factor holding me back from pushing forward with the change 
thanks a lot!</p>
<p>The principles of chemistry govern reactions in general at a micro level, but when you start working with mass quantities of materials, as many ChemEs do, you need to know how the physics of a task affect it. At a micro level, you can mix A and B to get C, but at a macro level (100,000 A + 100,000 B), thermodynamics and the like will give you troubles. That’s where the physics side of it comes in.
A large portion of high level ChemE deals with the physics of chemistry, though it’s not exactly the same kind of physics that most Mech/CivilE’s work with.</p>
<p>Ok okay thanks a lot :D</p>