somedood12345678

Hi, I was thinking of majoring in Electrical Engineering, (electronic engineering, not the power line and electricity stuff). However, I remember in Physics I hated the circuits section and the resistor inductor etc. stuff, is electronic engineering all about circuits?

TheDude2491

Assuming electronic engineer uses what I have learned in my electronics classes, then you will definitely be looking at circuits which, in addition to resistors/capactors, deals with transistors that are much tougher than the resistor/inductor things you learned in physics.

I don't know why you want to do electronic engineering if you didn't know what it really entails. If you chose it because it seems trendy with all the electronic equipment out in the market, try Computer Engineering or a Digital Systems focus in electrical. I think those types of courses (and perhaps jobs?) have less circuits calculations if that was what you hated

cosmicfish

Circuits is the bread and butter of electrical engineering, and you will at a minimum need to get through a few tough courses just to be able to graduate. However, engineers tend to specialize, especially at larger companies, and it is not too hard to find a specialty that does little or no circuit design or analysis.

But the question does still remain - why do you want to do this? Electronics as a general rule are ALL about circuits, albeit often at a very fine scale. If you want to avoid circuits entirely you need to look at things like signal processing, electromagnetics, or optics, none of which are a walk in the park!

So do a little thinking about what you really want to do and why.

somedood12345678

Thanks for the info. Really helped.

Mark77

Circuits itself is maybe 10% of the course, if even. The rest is largely related to things such as system dynamics, analysis, control systems, signal processing, computer programming and embedded systems, material science, physics and optics, magnetics, etc. You do not need to be a circuits whiz to graduate with a degree in Electrical Engineering. There are many engineering jobs out there, even ones in the computer hardware industry, where one wouldn't really be expected to know much, if anything about circuits.