/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.7549915]

So is there anything a engineer does that a physicist couldn't do? Why would anyone be interested in specialising in just a select few phenomena, such as components in electrical engineering. Nothing could be more boring as to take pieces of the theory behind it all and apply it into select few cases.

But that's beside the point. There is little doubt that any physicist could achieve the same results a specialised engineer(read, ant) does in a select field with a little more focus on the specific problem at hand. Mathematically, physicists are better equipped to handle any design problem that comes their way.

[Anonymous No.7549919]

>So is there anything a engineer does that a physicist couldn't do?
be remotely useful or practical

[Anonymous No.7549926]

>>7549915
>>7549919
Not to mention legally approve designs

[Anonymous No.7549929]

>>7549915
buttmad NEET faggot detected
fucking lel your life must be shit

[Anonymous No.7549931]

Probably design things to code (as in to safety rulesets developed by governments ) and perhaps do some cost reduction things, as most engineers have to take an operations class or two.

[Anonymous No.7549933]

>>7549915
>So is there anything a engineer does that a physicist couldn't do?
That's like asking if there's anything a medical doctor could do that a biologist can't do or a lawyer could do that a language major can't, although in this case it's more like asking if there is anything a medical doctor could do that a high-school kid can't "with a little more focus and fundamental theory".

[Anonymous No.7549939]

>>7549915

[Anonymous No.7549942]

>>7549933

Physicist-engineer comparison is nothing like biologist-M.D, but to use your analogy, physicist-engineer is more like comparing a multitool to a screwdriver.

[Anonymous No.7549946]

>>7549939

>Deriving a result vs plug in variables

[Anonymous No.7549947]

>>7549942
the engineer is more like a toolbox, physicist the multitool, and E&M or dynamics being the screwdriver

[Anonymous No.7549949]

>>7549946
>plug in variables
literally a meme

[Anonymous No.7549963]

>>7549939
>That one insecure nuke.

Pic related.

[Anonymous No.7549967]

>>7549915
i'm lmaoing at your life

[Anonymous No.7549968]

>>7549963
>left hand side
>still confused about some
>doesnt even address the other half
oh the things /scil does to save face

[Anonymous No.7549972]

>>7549968
>A physics student can't do specialised questions pertaining to engineering

We'll who would have thought that? The fact is about half of those questions are trivial, there's no arguing about this.

[Anonymous No.7549975]

>>7549972
>specialized questions
>heat transfer and thermoelectric shit
lel

[Anonymous No.7549977]

>>7549915
Is that why most physics majors are dropped engineer majors?

[Anonymous No.7549979]

>>7549975
Yes, just like your average engineer wouldn't learn about QFT the average physicist wouldn't learn about that. This is how specialisation works, you see, certain disciplines learn different things. I'm sorry if this is so hard for you to understand.

[Anonymous No.7549980]

>>7549979
>physicists dont learn about heat transfer and solid state physics
thats not right

[Anonymous No.7549981]

>>7549977

why would anyone drop the easier thing with more financial security?

[Anonymous No.7549982]

>>7549981
>engineering
>easier
pick one and enter the real world m8

[Anonymous No.7549984]

>>7549980
Perhaps I'm the exception here then, but I never did anything on heat transfer.

[Anonymous No.7549989]

>>7549982

wake up and realise you picked the easy way out m8

[Anonymous No.7549993]

>>7549989
>harder entrance requirements
>larger courseload
>more difficult coursework
>harder to get experience
there is literally nothing about majoring in physics that's harder over engineering, besides trying to get a chick to fuck you

[Anonymous No.7549998]

>>7549989
>engineering major
>easier than physics major

it's literally not. engineer majors are professional majors. it's like going pre-law. they have to take exams to actually work as an engineer. there is much more to it.

dumb fuck

[Anonymous No.7550000]

>HURR DURR ENGINEERING VS PHYSICS HURR DURR HUUURRRR DURRRRRRRR

Oh my god, shut the fuck up.

[Anonymous No.7550001]

>>7550000
Dub-quads-4-troof

[Anonymous No.7550002]

>>7550000
>NEET mathfag autismo detected

[Anonymous No.7550003]

>>7549993
>harder entrance requirements
yeah, because so many people want easy money
>larger course load
yeah, you might have to take a bit of Chem to go with your baby Analysis and Mechanics, but suck it up
>more difficult coursework
yeah, never doing complex analysis or differential geometry is so fucking hard, led alone taking pure mathematics to get a grip on GR.
>harder to get experience
what? engineering schools have deals with gas companies and shit what now, you can get hired as an intern your first summer

it's a sausagefest eitherway

[Anonymous No.7550004]

Why there is so much people in the world who feel the need top ut others down in order to feel superior; what’s this need – or where does it come from - to say that others are inferior to you as a way of self-ego-massage?

I don’t even hang out here on /sci/ that much (I’m more of a /lit/ person), but whenever I come to this board I always see threads like this one. To be frank there are also similar things on /lit/.

What’s this constant need to measure people one against another? “Oh, Euler is good, but Guass is far better”; “Oh, yes, Einstein was great, but he was no newton”, “Yeah, engineers are good and important, but not as smart as us physics: we could do whatever they do if we wanted to?”.

This last phrase is especially relevant:

>”Yeah, engineers are good and important, but not as smart as us physics: we could do whatever they do if we wanted to?”

Really? Well, why the hell aren’t you guys doing it then? Have you ever tried to work with engineering? Honestly, did you ever even change a tire? Could you have imagined what was necessary to build the LHC? Could you, theoretical physicists, even when together in a huge group, draw the LHC project?

Why don’t you people stop feeling superior to everyone else?

[Anonymous No.7550007]

wow, what the fuck happened to /sci/? engineers suck cock, everyone agreed on this

[Anonymous No.7550010]

>>7550003
>yeah, never doing complex analysis or differential geometry is so fucking hard, led alone taking pure mathematics to get a grip on GR.
lel try senior design, where you're not just fucking with your pen and paper all day but have to design something novel from the ground up (including all the physics and systems design so it works and is useful and publishable) or any of the upper level engineering courses

[Anonymous No.7550012]

>>7549942
Wrong, it's a precisely perfect analogy.

MD/Engineer:
>Professional degree
>Highly employable
>Respected
>High course load
>Money
>Degree for career orientated adults

Biologist/Physicist:
>Gen. ed. degree
>Unemployable except for QC/IT
>Not respected
>Light course load
>No money
>Degree for manchildren and house wives

[Anonymous No.7550013]

>>7550007
upset?

[Anonymous No.7550014]

>>7550010

the difference is i can do QFT but you will never be able to. on the other hand, i can do your baby tier calculations up to some bourgeois employer standard after reading a book

[Anonymous No.7550018]

>>7550004
>Why there is so much people in the world who feel the need top ut others down in order to feel superior; what’s this need – or where does it come from - to say that others are inferior to you as a way of self-ego-massage?

It's not "people in the world," it's 18 year olds who picked their major a few months ago and are feeling insecure about it.

[Anonymous No.7550023]

>>7549972
The fact is an engineering major could do any questions a physics major can, but not vice versa.

You clearly don't understand the Venn diagram.

The set containing the knowledge taught in Physics undergrad is small and mostly overlaps with engineering.

The set containing engineering is more than twice as big and the overlap is therefore also much smaller compared relatively speaking.

Yell out if I need to draw you a picture.

[Anonymous No.7550026]

>>7550007
>engineers suck cock, everyone agreed on this

Nobody is bad or less important just because of their field.

Can you play football as well as Messi? Can you compose as Beethoven (or even the Beatles)? Would you be able to direct the Godfather? Could you write War and Peace, or Macbeth, or A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Do you have any idea of how to build something like the LHC? Could you be able to project the Empire State Building? The Golden Gate Bridge: do you know how to make such a project work? Can you sing like Tina Turner?

Stop thinking you are superior just because you study physics or mathematics. To be frank: what have you even achieved in one of those two fields? What have you ever done to sustain your huge ego?

Learn to respect other people and to see how everyone is important. Or do you know how to plant and grow the food you eat? And all the system of drains and water pipes and the electrical wiring that you use every day: was you the one who project it? Do you even know how to do it?

[Anonymous No.7550030]

>>7549979
Most engineering degrees do Lorentz transforms in intro physics and QM (see Purdue's programme for example) which is what physics major take in undergrad and QFT is not covered until grad-school in 99% of physics programmes.


Physics has no specialized knowledge that engineering majors do not have, but not vice versa.

[Anonymous No.7550031]

>>7549993
>besides trying to get a chick to fuck you
leled

[Anonymous No.7550032]

>>7550014
>i can do your baby tier calculations up to some bourgeois employer standard after reading a book
ok design for me a reactor to produce 1500-2000 6-day curies of Mo-99. you can choose the reactor type and core configuration. do you want a HEU or LEU core, LWR, HWR, CANDU, aqueous homogeneous reactor? whats your core configuration look like? placement and enrichment of each fuel assembly, shim rod, scram rod, detector systems? how long is the fuel cycle and how is your refuelling going to be done? make sure to satisfy all the legal requirements, you know where to find those. or maybe you want to design a fusion reactor for He-3 production. what kind of reactor? plasma configuration? how will you capture and store the He? shielding for neutrons, xrays, etc? what about online refuelling and ash removal? energy conversion? what are you going to do with the tritium you breed?
engineering isnt simple

[Anonymous No.7550033]

>>7550023

what undergrad engineering degree has QM, Lagrangian mechanics, Statistical mechanics, Electrodynamics (not the baby tier shit but Jackson), Mathematical Methods in physics (topics ranging from complex analysis, PDE's, functional analysis, elements of differential geometry)

Having to do chem/economics/ whatever ever bullshit ethics course isn't course load.

Do you even know what a Hilbert space is?

[Anonymous No.7550035]

>>7550004
I think it comes largely from investing in the future for happiness.

When we set ambitions about the future, like what we want to study, what we want to be, wanting to be married/having kids, and having that be our sole motivation and source of comfort for forming self-identity at new stages in our lives, we don't really know what that actually feels like until we get there.

And to phase out of old chapters of our lives we kind of need to detach, and start identifying with those future goals and values, immersing ourselves into what we want our new lives to be.

But really we won't reach that identity until we mature into it, and doing that usually involves rejecting a lot of external things, reinforcing a lot of internal things, having those internal reinforcements collapse (or sway) to internal forces, and so forth until we find a comfortable compromise in our sense of self and how we approach the world (and any new environments we face in those new stages of our lives.)

I was a snarky, cocky piece of shit whenever I first started anything, really. When I became old enough to vote and being interested in politics I got offended that some people didn't care and just didn't want to vote. When I got into college to study math I felt pride about that. I don't know why, it didn't matter for shit. My dorm mates ended up being in art, social sciences, and one in language studies. Spending a few years with them formed more self-identity for my college years than my field of study. Careers are just what interest and motivate us. Hell I don't even talk to my friends about work very often.

Maybe some of that psychobabble made sense or maybe I'm just fuckin retarded who knows

[Anonymous No.7550040]

>>7550003
>complex analysis
Engineers actually do complex analysis in control theory which is a graduate math course, physicists fuck around with baby with some trivial CA results in a baby few courses, but they never do real complex analysis.

You aren't doing 1/10th of complex analysis engineers do.

[Anonymous No.7550043]

>>7550040

lel, then i bet you can do a fourier transform by contour integration?

[Anonymous No.7550044]

>>7550003
>it's a sausagefest eitherway
No it's not, physics is for women who want to be house wives. Engineering is the only male dominated profession, that's where the gay engineering meme comes from in the first place.

[Anonymous No.7550046]

>>7550033
i've taken basic QM (not grad level), done shit with lagranian mechanics in projects, E&M in plasma phys, still need to take PDEs, but its not like i havnt been exposed to them in heat transfer, plasma phys, and neutronics/reactor theory. engineering isnt the plug and chug meme you believe it to be

[Anonymous No.7550051]

>>7550040
>Complex analysis
>Graduate math

Haha! Where the fuck do you go to college? Also neither engineers nor physicists really "do" complex analysis, perhaps we both use contour integrals or conformal mappings, but neither of us study complex analysis, certainly not at undergraduate.

[Anonymous No.7550055]

>>7550004
>order to feel superior; what’s this need – or where does it come from - to say that others are inferior to you as a way of self-ego-massage?

You wouldn't understand if you've been a depressed beta your entire life that avoids any competition because of your fear of failure which stems from your deeply repressed childhood and other memories where dominated by men who are superior to you.

People who are alpha leaders are competitive, this is why smart and strong people banter so much on /sci/ and /fit/. No one actually takes it seriously, but light competitiveness doesn't trigger people who aren't scared of competition.


>tl;dr
It's called having non-negligible testosterone concentration in your blood.

[Anonymous No.7550057]

>>7550046
>engineering isnt the plug and chug meme you believe it to be
>Posts a series of slides all about plug and chug.

Nice.

[Anonymous No.7550058]

>>7550051
I said control theory you fucking idiot. Not that you'd be smart enough to know what that is or how control analysis methods are utilized in rigorously analyzing non-linear dynamics.

Not that I blame you, you're only a physics major after all.

[Anonymous No.7550059]

I had an engineering class once and this girl who i believe was in mechanical engineering was reading some fantasy novel during class and the professor was like "hey, (name), you might wanna pay attention for this part, it's new material"

And she's just like "No!" in a really stern voice

and he's like "Uh, okay then. Attendance isn't mandatory, you know, you don't really have to be here if you don't want to be"

And then she slammed her book down, started huffing, and walked out of the room and slammed the door

like she was in fucking highschool or something and got in an argument with the teacher

this was like junior level at a university what the fuck why are you acting like an autistic child

fuckin' engineers man

[Anonymous No.7550061]

>>7550057
>>Posts a series of slides all about plug and chug.
ayy lmao its a derivation dickhead

[Anonymous No.7550062]

>>7550012
THIS

[Anonymous No.7550066]

>>7550058
>Getting this mad

Low test detected. I was going to apologise for miss reading your post, but I doubt someone with such severe autism can understand what an apology is .

[Anonymous No.7550067]

>>7550061
OH YOU GOT HIM!

engineers are fags

[Anonymous No.7550068]

>>7550033
>what undergrad engineering degree has QM,
Most of them.
>Lagrangian mechanics,
It's covered in most continuum mechanics / transfer process courses.
>Statistical mechanics,
ChemEs
Electrodynamics (not the baby tier shit but Jackson),
EEs, programme at my uni specifically uses Jackson ironically enough.
>Mathematical Methods in physics (topics ranging from complex analysis, PDE's,
These are handled in far greater depth in engineering, especially PDEs, physics doesn't even do close to the same depth in non-linear PDE system, they mostly use 2nd year PDE knowledge.
>functional analysis, elements of differential geometry)
I'll give you that.

[Anonymous No.7550069]

physics vs mechanical engineer curriculum at a top uni

PHYSICS

First Year
semester 1
>General Physics: Mechanics
>Calculus with Analytic Geometry I
>Chemical Principles I
>>Experimental Chemistry I (lab)
>Rhetoric and Composition
>Physics First Year Seminar
semester 2
>General Physics: E&M
>Calculus with Analytic Geometry II
>Chemical Principles II (lab)
>Experimental Chemistry II

Second Year
semester 1
>General Physics: Fluids/Thermal
>General Physics: Waves/Quantum
>Calculus and Vector Analysis
>MATH 220 Matrices
semester 2
>Introduction to Modern Physics
>Ordinary and Partial Diff. Equations
>"programming elective"
>Effective Speech

Third Year
semester 1
>Intermediate Electricity and Magnetism
>Theoretical Mechanics
>MATH 4xx
semester 2
>Introduction to Quantum Mechanics
>Thermal Physics
>MATH 4xx
>Topics in Contemporary Physics

Fourth Year
semester 1
>PHYS 4xx
>Intermediate Optics OR Experimental Physics
>Effective Writing: Tech. Writing
semester 2
>PHYS 4xx
>Experimental Physics OR Electronics for Scientists
122 TOTAL CREDITS

next post will be the mechanical engineers curriculum for comparison

[Anonymous No.7550070]

>>7550066
Calling people who can't read a fucking idiot is not getting mad in the same way that stomping a cockroach that is annoying you is not getting mad.

[Anonymous No.7550071]

>>7550066
Actually, you know what?
I overreacted. A lot, about all of this.

Sorry man, I guess I just lost it there. We all get a little heated up sometimes. Things just haven't been well lately and I've been a little tilted. Sorry for being a douche.

[Anonymous No.7550073]

>>7550061
Exactly my point, its just given to you.

[Anonymous No.7550076]

>>7550073
yeah, you dont talk about it and go through it with the professor in class, then work with it in homwork

[Anonymous No.7550077]

>>7550071
No problem bro, I'm just shitposting 'cos I'm bored anyway. Hope everything gets better for you soon.

[Anonymous No.7550080]

>>7550059
Maybe she was going through some horrible shit in her life and wanted to attention whore?

People do weird things when they crack.

[Anonymous No.7550082]

>>7550069
I somehow doubt a "top" uni doesn't start ODEs until the 4th semester.

[Anonymous No.7550086]

>>7550080
Nah she wasn't going through any problems. She was always like that, and would get extremely defensive if we were doing in-class problems and she'd give an answer and she was wrong, she'd back it up to no end even when the professor showed her where she went wrong.

She just acted like it was still high-school, and not fucking university.
Also like, you know how in high school it'd be somewhat okay if the teacher mentions something and you're like "Oh can I tell a story about that?"
and it's like yeah sure fine we HAVE to be there for the class duration and classes move slow so being sociable is alright.
she'd try to do shit like that in lecture hall in a class of like 40 people.

like what the hell

[Anonymous No.7550087]

>>7550069
Why do programmes use the term thermal physics to describe their statistical mechanics courses noways. Are they trying to sound more impressive?

[Anonymous No.7550088]

>>7549915
>So is there anything a engineer does that a physicist couldn't do?
deal with a real course schedule

[Anonymous No.7550092]

>>7550071
Actually I wasn't even that dude, I just saw some people arguing and I have a nasty habit of pretending to be one of them and apologizing to the other to be a dick.