<p>A few months ago, I was walking in our Physics building and I noticed a promoting physics as a great major and career to pursue. I can't remember this precisely, but I think that one of the claims that the poster tried to make was that students pursuing a career in physics can actually do engineers' jobs, with the exception to civil engineering because, to do CE work, one has to pass CE exams and have CE licensing. </p>
<p>Is this true? And to what extent? Is there a catch to this? </p>
<p>I got the impression that the poster (which was very concise) was trying to claim that a BS or MS in physics can allow someone to do mechanical, civil or electrical engineers' jobs.</p>
<p>It is theoretically possible to earn a PE and do engineering work without a degree in engineering. I know of someone who did it with an applied math degree. However, it takes a lot of experience and a lot of work. A degree in engineering is certainly a more direct approach.</p>
<p>For jobs not requiring a PE, the obstacles may be less formidable. I don’t know.</p>
<p>EDIT: This may also depend on state licensing policies.</p>
<p>Any idea to what extent are a physicists abilities able to do? Assuming that all the physicist has learned were from the courses taken for a physics degree (not the engineering department).</p>
<p>There are a number of fields where mathematicians and hard scientists can work as engineers. In some fields (mostly civil) this is difficult due to licensing, but never impossible. As to the rest, it mostly comes down to whether or not you have the knowledge.</p>
<p>Realize that engineering spans pure theory and “rule of thumb” design. All fields have specialities that are too practical (for lack of a better term) for a scientist to likely manage, but conversely there are other specialities where you are essentially working as a theorist and where a scientist is right at home. I personally know several physicists working as electrical engineers in areas like antenna design and atmospheric propagation - and we make no distinction between “us” and “them”!</p>
<p>I would, however, caution that I do not think that MOST physicists can work as engineers - even in the more theoretical specialities there are practical skills to be learned, and most physicists will skip those courses. Physicist-engineers are generally those who have taken a lot of engineering (or engineering-like) courses, or else those who have gained practical experience while working towards a research-based graduate degree. Someone taking only the “core curriculum” is not likely to pass muster.</p>
<p>something to keep in mind is that not all physics majors are the same. a physics majors who studies a lot of condensed matter physics will naturally have an outlet into semiconductor physics/materials. </p>
<p>other areas where physics majors make easy transitions into are antenna design and signal processing. possibly fluids, although that is almost never taught to undergraduate physics majors. one could definitely pick up fluids though. </p>
<p>on the other hand, if you’re a physics majors who made spent his undergraduate working in cosmology/particle physics, it might be a little harder to transition to an engineering job post B.S…</p>
<p>We have someone working with our prominent civil/structural engineering firm who got their undergrad degree from a good LAC and double-majored in physics and international studies. She went on to get her graduate degree from Stanford in construction engineering and now works for us doing structural design and 3D modeling/rendering. Because of that graduate degree, she’ll be able to get her PE in a few years.</p>
<p>There are tons of physicists doing engineering jobs including me. I also teach in the engineering dept at a local university. I have found it is a huge advantage with my background in that I can easily switch back and forth between mechanical, electrical engineering etc.</p>
<p>“There are tons of physicists doing engineering jobs including me. I also teach in the engineering dept at a local university. I have found it is a huge advantage with my background in that I can easily switch back and forth between mechanical, electrical engineering etc.”</p>
<p>So your education is just in Physics and that allows you to do and understand ME, EE, etc.?</p>
<p>I’ve been doing this stuff for 35 years. My first job was doing electrostatics modeling. My second job was doing thermal analysis. You think a physicist doesn’t understand e&m or heat transfer?? Engineering is based on physical principles. If you understand the principles, it is easy to come up to speed on anything in engineering. I’ve come across mechanical engineers who can’t do simple e&m calculations and EE’s who can’t calculate a resonant frequency to save their lives. I’ve done optical engineering for years not having ever taken an optics course. This stuff is just not that difficult.</p>
<p>I’m surprised. You would imagine that people going into engineering would take the time to understand the science that their engineering is based on. I was hardly ever impressed with most of the classmates I have worked with in physics and calculus classes.</p>
<p>They may understand the science that their engineering is based on (but even at that, their understanding is not deep) and for the most part they do not understand other engineering disciplines.</p>
<p>I know for myself, I remember minimal E&M (which I’m sure a physics major would have better recall over), but I’m sure I’ve got more Materials knowledge at the ready than most physics majors. When I need to recall some E&M stuff, I crack open one of my old textbooks and can relearn it pretty quickly. I imagine it’s mostly the same process you’d have for picking up any specific engineering field.</p>
<p>The problem is that an engineering degree tends to be less agile than a physics one. I have experienced both sides of the fence, and engineering tends to give you a lot less of that fundamental knowledge that you can use to create new knowledge. However, engineering will typically go much more in depth on specific topics, and so they are of more immediate value to employers than a physicist.</p>
<p>However… there is a reason why physicists are well-represented in semiconductor R&D. Let me give you an example:</p>
<p>One day, we find out that material X is far superior to silicon for making computer chips and so engineers at various companies start to go design circuits. Unfortunately for them, their solid state physics classes catered completely to silicon, and so, for all they know, a MOSFET made out of any material has 3 different modes of operation and that pFETS are always worse than nFETS. A physicist, however, would probably know that all of those things are a function of the crystal shape and could easy figure out how the equations change given little more than the crystal’s unit cell.</p>
<p>On the flip side, it isn’t exactly trivial for a physics student to gain a good intuition about the system-level engineering abstractions that engineering students employ without having practice in that area. A physics student can’t just step into a circuit design job and start owning just because he may know E&M a little better. </p>
<p>And also, are ab-initio band structure calculations really that good? I’ve never personally done such a calculation, but my physics professor in that class said that even the best ones often get stuff wrong within a factor of two.</p>
<p>Not gonna lie, I don’t remember any of my solid state classes from the physics departments I’ve taken classes from talk about MOSFETS. :(</p>
<p>Also, I’m not really sure what the point of arguing physics vs engineering is. Each person comes to the tables with their own skills/background, and that uniqueness is what makes for an effective team.</p>
<p>I wasn’t really claiming that. My post readily admits that engineers have much more knowledge that can be more immediately applied to a job designing things. The problem comes when there is a major paradigm shift that doesn’t even use the knowledge taught as the “fundamentals” of the area in engineering.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ab initio calculations aren’t too good at predicting quantitative things (e.g., bandgaps). I wasn’t even talking about those though – anybody can plug in some atoms into a computer with DFT code. A decent number of materials can have their properties predicted from a simple LCAO calculation, which can be done by hand for many materials.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They don’t, nor should they, as it’s just one specific application of a semiconductor. Most physics departments do, of course, have circuits labs however.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, what’s the point of most of the threads here? There was some physics hate going on here so I popped in to give my view as someone who’s been on both sides of the fence :). It’s perhaps that I have experienced both sides that I have respect for physicists. I feel like I would be much worse off if my knowledge of EE were not supplemented by my physics knowledge.</p>