<p>how hard is materials science, compared to other engineering majors??</p>
<p>It is below a few but since the area of knowledge encompasses so much. It is like the lovechild of Civil E and Chem E with more Civ I think. Chem and CompE & EE are equally as hard but in different ways. ECE don’t wanna do chem and chem don’t wanna do circuits. Simple as that.</p>
<p>How’s industrial engineering?</p>
<p>from what I’ve heard, it’s not really engineering. It’s more quality inspection with products. Needed everywhere where manufacturing is present.</p>
<p>That didn’t really answer my question. Industrial and Management Engineering - how hard is it?</p>
<p>its a fact, if its not engineering…its easy as hell.</p>
<p>Most difficult majors in my opinion are…</p>
<p>1 - Nuclear, Materials
Nuclear and materials engineering deal with quantum level physics and quantum level chemistry and is based on naturally occuring phenomenon that most of the time even the most brilliant person doesnt exactly know whats going on making it extremely complicated and sensitive. Materials is one of the most academic engineering majors because of the amount of detailed observation required. Nuclear is the most sensitive and requires a big picture understanding of whats going on and a clutch ability for details. In these majors its harder to B.S. your way through because most of the time your being asked to explain some phenomenon that is occuring and dont have a list of equations or rules to refer to, unlike the lesser majors that have specific equations that you can just memorize and go about your day. </p>
<p>2 - Biomedical, Chemical, Mechanical, Aerospace
These majors are still subject to nature and are physics adn chemistry based but the degree of detail isnt as important. A nuclear engineer carries out his sigfigs to the ninth decimal place, whereas the third decimal place is sufficient for chemical engineers when dealing with reactions. Aerospace and mechanical are hand in hand, but arent as demanding because most of it can be visualized intuitively. Biomedical is barely on this list, its a difficult major in theory, except the requirements of a biomed major arent too demanding and dont really have much depth.</p>
<p>3 - Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering
These majors are definitely the most tedious and require random spurts of brilliance but for the most part are more so long hours than complexity. 90% of the work you do is repetitive and a monkey could do given instruction, but about 10% requires a pretty good brain. The reason why its 3rd on my list is because its logic based and the questions are only as difficult as we make them, where as in the harder fields, the questions are asked of us and data sets are never discrete or guaranteed to follow a pattern.</p>
<p>4 - Engineering Physics, Civil, IOE
From what I hear, civil and IOE are not real engineering majors, most of the things learned dont require intense studying or problem solving skills, just open ears. Engineering physics is a purely academic approach to engineering for people who dont want to get their hands dirty or are scared to have to implement the things they have learned ;)</p>
<p>it depends on ur passion.to someone chem eng may be the hardest.for me,chem is my passion.So Chem E is good.One thing however is that it needs a lot of dedication and the work load can get to you.My avice is,b4 u go to engineering,make sure ur heart is there and go with one heart and love what u do.That’s the only way to survive in ChemE</p>
<p>Mmkay, if civ’s so easy, <em>you</em> guys try building a 1500 foot structure, without a prototype, that will withstand earthquakes, wind, fire, and make it as <em>CHEAP AS POSSIBLE</em>. If it falls down, lose your license and be a media pariah for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>Don’t require intense studying or problem solving skills, yeah right. I recommend you not go with “what you hear”.</p>
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<p>Go tell that to the people studying engineering physics at Cornell.</p>
<p>Kfed, you think that EngPhys is one of the easiest? I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. That’s funny, yet sad at the same time.</p>
<p>Um, so I took one quarter of a year in Engineering Physics, and it was quite possibly the most painful thing ever.</p>
<p>And this was in HS.</p>
<p>EECS is definitely pretty notorious for its level of difficulty. Civil/environmental, not so much.</p>
<p>Keep in mind this is all still engineering, which is no walk in the park for business majors at heart. =)</p>
<p>I took a junior/senior level engineering physics course and it equivalated as a introductory nuclear science course that i needed. The depth that nuclear engineers goes into applied physics is way beyond engineering physics, the way i see it if I ever were to get overwhelmed with nuclear, i would just cash out and get an “engineering physics” degree. For the Civil engineering comment, please, nothing you do is from scratch, its all been done before and all the information you need to complete the projects you do can be found in templates and predetermined specs, besides you guys just design the structures, somebody else has to actually build it. And I stand by my comment about EECS, if you think its complex it probably is, for you specifically, and its probably the reason your not in a more difficult major.</p>
<p>also, in regards to business majors, accounting is no walk in the park ,I would put it up there with computer science and electrical engineering, the other majors are a joke though (Business Admin, marketing, etc)</p>
<p>all engineering is difficult jeez…But even if you choose something like CS or EE, if its something you like, I doubt it’ll be as hard as if you didnt like what you were doing</p>
<p>“For the Civil engineering comment, please, nothing you do is from scratch, its all been done before and all the information you need to complete the projects you do can be found in templates and predetermined specs, besides you guys just design the structures, somebody else has to actually build it.”</p>
<p>Oh, GIVE me a BREAK. Learn what you’re talking about before you go spouting off nonsense. NOTHING in civ has been done before. Varied soil conditions, varied wind conditions, varied weather conditions… Even designing things as simple as cookie-cutter CVS stores requires a TON of individualized specifications. As to the stuff I’m doing, I have to do research and small-scale and full-scale testing in order to fully figure out what the stresses and strains acting on various structural members are going to be. I do a lot of risk management, too, which deals with the uncertainty of seismic events and how we minimize damage to structures in extremely unpredictable situations. Look at the Burj Dubai sometime. Wind is the biggest problem in that design, and the guys and gals at SOM up in Chicago had to build a scale model to test in a wind tunnel to ensure that the whole darned thing doesn’t get felled like a redwood with the first gust. The public is demanding more of structures than ever before these days, and civil engineers are working really hard to make structures that will withstand ANYTHING (flaming A380 at mach 0.9, anybody?) in accordance with public demand.</p>
<p>Look up “soil liquefaction”. If that’s not a phenomenon that makes your toes curl, then there’s nothing that’ll convince you that civil engineering isn’t so easy.</p>
<p>And the fact that <em>someone else</em> is building it makes it even more petrifying… You have no way of knowing whether or not Jim Bob down on the construction site is going to cut through the flange of a critical beam in order to fit an electrical conduit through there. I’ve seen it done… It caused a pretty spectacular beam failure in a seismic situation.</p>
<p>OK. That’s it from me. Do your homework next time. Just because <em>some</em> civil engineers do nothing aside from designing overhead sign bridges for the local DOT doesn’t mean that’s all there is to civil engineering. Remember that somewhere, there are electrical engineers who do nothing but design two-dollar digital watches for a living.</p>
<p>in general though, the schooling required to be a civil engineer isnt as demanding as the others is my main point. I understand that in any field you may be faced with some super complex projects, but in general the projects are pretty routine, and the frequency of having to deal with abnormalities and “unforseen variables” in situations are far less than in the other fields. And the fact that you have to keep things within “Jim bobs” abilities shows how limited you are in being able to go into extreme detail and that extreme detail isnt as significant as you may think. Carrying out measurements to the 9th sigfig isnt necessary considering jim bob is probably using a tape measurer from home depot.</p>
<p>kfed, I don’t see what your fascination is with sig figs. Tons of calculations nowadays are done through the use of Matlab, and those are carried through to machine precision. Matlab doesnt say “OH! It’s a civil engineering project, I’ll stop with 3 sf’s!”</p>
<p>Thank you, karthikkito… </p>
<p>Kfed, you’re nuts. Abnormalities? Unforseen variables? Are you kidding?</p>
<p>Wind. Rain. Unpredictable live loads. Soil conditions. Construction variability. Field welds. Shoddy materials. Earthquakes. Tornados. Liquefaction. Terrorism. Fatigue. Fracture. Notching. Corrosion. The unpredictability of working with concrete. Broken piles. Pockets of underground peat. Improper drainage. Ground subduction. Groundwater contamination. Human error. The fact that your fabrication is done in the FIELD, and not in a controlled environment. The fact that a structure’s never been built in that particular place before. Backing bars in moment-resisting frame connections. Constantly changing loads, and unexpected scenarios.</p>
<p>I could go on. There’s a lot more uncertainty in civ eng than in any other field, simply because you don’t have control over SO many factors.</p>
<p>Uncertainty is inordinately difficult to deal with. I’d <em>love</em> to have nine significant figures to deal with! That way, you just carry things out to however many significant figures, and you <em>know</em> you’re okay! In civ, you have to employ heavy statistical measures and risk-management strategies in order to deal with that uncertainty. If you don’t, then you are LIABLE for any number of the things that might go wrong, that you don’t have control over! There are a fair number of civ eng professors I’ve encountered who felt it was easier to get their PhDs and do research for the rest of their lives than go into practice and face that sort of liability, every single day.</p>
<p>Nothing is “routine” when it comes to the uncertainties involved with uncontrolled environments, large scales, and construction error.</p>
<p>BME is up there simply because you’re engineering for a non-man-made-machine. It’s pretty easy to model fluid flowing through a pipe but try modeling fluid flowing through irregular veins. Keep in mind that the human body rejects almost everything that’s not unique to it and keep in mind that not only do you have to be very good with the human body you also have to be very familiar with another form of engineering (EE/CS/CompE/ChemE/MaterialsE… etc…) because you need to apply them to engineer for the human body.</p>
<p>Plus BME is an “interdisciplinary” engineering major… in EE for example you learn about circuits and electricity and circuits and signals and stuff like that in BME you have to learn some engineering, tons of human bio physiology stuff, tons of chemistry, physics, math, etc etc etc… Still it’s very fun, and still probably not “THE HARDEST ENGINEERING MAJOR” – I don’t know what is though.</p>