How heavily is math applied into these fields?

boneh3ad
Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:24:05 +0000

Just like taking thermo in the physics department is going to focus a lot more on kinetic theory and everything on the microscale than it would if you took it in the ME department. Physics strives to understand why things happen. Engineering tries to take things and use them to make other things happen. Basically. Using the thermo example, in the physics version you get more in depth into what is happening to each molecule (when I took it) and what the energy changes really represent, while the ME version really was telling you how to quantify the energy changes and how to use them and how it applied to practical problems.