<p>What exactly is the major difference between applied mechanics and mechanical engineering degree like the one in caltech?
Is applied mechanics generally less popular now?
Would it be better to pursue a career in physics or applied mechanics?
And would pursuing a career in physics be more prestigious and more popular than one in applied mechanics?</p>
<p>I am sure that someone more knowledgeable in engineering will correct me but I think a good analogy would be that Applied Mechanics is to Mechanical Engineering as theoretical physics is to experimental physics.</p>
<p>As for a choice between physics and applied mechanics. It is really a question of whether you prefer engineering or science. There are a lot of things in common but the fundamental motivation for the field is different. As a physicist, I don’t think that physics is any more prestigious than engineering as for popularity, I think that more students want engineering than physics.</p>
<p>That is a reasonable analogy. Applied mechanics tends to be quite a bit less applied than mechanical engineering. It is a much more theory-rich field at the undergraduate level, though once you get up to the PhD level, they are basically identical. It seems like most of my friends who did applied mechanics ended up doing graduate school afterward.</p>
<p>Also, the idea of the “prestige” of a degree is nonsense. Do the degree that you are passionate about and that you see yourself doing for a living when you are done.</p>
<p>isn’t applied mechanics not really that useful in comparison to physics now?
And also, mechanics is already completely understood which is why physicists are studying modern physics.</p>
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<p>That depends on what you mean by “useful”, of course. Most would argue that pure physics is not useful outside of a purely academic sense (which I personally still consider useful). Applied mechanics is somewhere between physics and engineering, so most would argue that its practicality is somewhat greater than that of physics.</p>
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<p>This is just silly. For starters, mechanics is a branch of physics that is just as relevant now as it was in the 1700’s. It is plenty modern. There are numerous unsolved challenges left in mechanics, a good example of which is the transition to turbulence in a fluid flow.</p>
<p>oh thanks. but isn’t physics generally more popular than applied mechanics?
Like more people know about famous physicists like einstein and feynman, but no one really knows any applied mechanicians.
And also, many times when i say engineering mechanics or applied mechanics many people just assume mechanical engineering. Isn’t it less prestigious than a physicist?</p>
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<p>To 99% of the people in the world, there is no difference between “physics” and “applied mechanics.” Similarly, someone getting a Nobel Prize for work they do as an applied mechanician would be getting the Nobel Prize in Physics. So let’s think, who are some well-known mechanicians: Euler, Galilei, Hertz, Lagrange, Laplace, Navier, Stokes, Prandtl, Newton and plenty more.</p>
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<p>What do you mean by “prestigious”? For all intents and purposes, mechanicians are physicists. Is mechanics not a branch of physics? Just because it is more than a century old (as opposed to, say, quantum mechanics or general relativity) doesn’t mean it is somehow no longer qualified as one of the fundamental branches of physics. Technically speaking, quantum mechanics is a subfield of mechanics, so if you really want to get technical, anyone who works in quantum mechanics is a mechanician.</p>
<p>lol I just mean in the physics departments at universities, the research fields are mostly quantum mechanics and modern physics.</p>
<p>Oh and also, would someone getting a doctorate in applied mechanics do research on applied mechanics as a whole or specific subfields in applied mechanics?</p>
<p>any ideas?</p>