**The Official Engineers/Engineering Thread V2**

[arekieh]

I was a chemistry major that switched to chemical engineering. Chemistry major =/= chemical engineering major. Chemical engineers need to know the science behind the reactions, but they don't need to synthesize something from scratch. Instead, they figure out how to mass produce it by varying compositions, temperatures, flows, pressures, etc. Chemical engineers also have to figure out equipment sizing and what they need to pass constraints. Chemists may show you what needs to be done on lab scale to get the product you want, but a chemical engineer has to figure out how to mass produce it by designing and manipulating the process.

Just in short, chemistry has a small role for chemical engineering. We need to know how and why it happens, but that's pretty much it. It's always much easier to do things in smaller scale. For instance, I can easily build a small model of the Sears (Willis) tower, but to build a full scale one is a massive accomplishment. That's why they are paid more, and that's why a chemist can't be a chemical engineer and vice versa.

Edit: I would also like to point out another reason why chemical engineers are paid more is because chemical engineers own the process. Their decisions greatly affect the safety of others. They have a high responsibility to not mess up. Breaking glassware and cutting yourself (although bad) is nothing in comparison to over pressurizing a vessel and catching someone in the line of fire because you were negligent on running the equipment correctly and you undersized the relief valve.

Strong this. You barely even need intro chemistry classes for chemical engineering. You pretty much only need to know stoich, equilibrium stuff and rate of reaction/reaction kinetics stuff.

Pure Chemical engineers are called process engineers, not chemical engineers.

[Sensei Squat]

I was a chemistry major that switched to chemical engineering. Chemistry major =/= chemical engineering major. Chemical engineers need to know the science behind the reactions, but they don't need to synthesize something from scratch. Instead, they figure out how to mass produce it by varying compositions, temperatures, flows, pressures, etc. Chemical engineers also have to figure out equipment sizing and what they need to pass constraints. Chemists may show you what needs to be done on lab scale to get the product you want, but a chemical engineer has to figure out how to mass produce it by designing and manipulating the process.

Just in short, chemistry has a small role for chemical engineering. We need to know how and why it happens, but that's pretty much it. It's always much easier to do things in smaller scale. For instance, I can easily build a small model of the Sears (Willis) tower, but to build a full scale one is a massive accomplishment. That's why they are paid more, and that's why a chemist can't be a chemical engineer and vice versa.

Edit: I would also like to point out another reason why chemical engineers are paid more is because chemical engineers own the process. Their decisions greatly affect the safety of others. They have a high responsibility to not mess up. Breaking glassware and cutting yourself (although bad) is nothing in comparison to over pressurizing a vessel and catching someone in the line of fire because you were negligent on running the equipment correctly and you undersized the relief valve.

Thanks again for the response.

Just curious as to what made you switch from Chemistry to Chemical Engineering?

[CycloneDude]

Thanks again for the response.

Just curious as to what made you switch from Chemistry to Chemical Engineering?

The lack of employment from people that graduated, the inability to do any research unless you're a PhD, and the pay. The chemistry department have a lot more girls in it which made it somewhat worthwhile haha. I believe I made the right choice though. I'm paid much higher than any other of my old high school friends, and I get a lot more responsibilities than I would have as a chemist.

Career wise, for at least my plant that is, as a chemical engineer I have a lot more runway to do things than any other engineer in the plant. Chemical engineers are considered the "jack of all trades" for Koch/Flint Hills. We are supposed to know the units, the process, the equipment, the reliability of the equipment, we put input on the turnarounds and the maintenance, and we also supervise/manage a lot of what the operators do. Given, we don't have supervisional rights to all those plans, but even as a new hire you do play a large role on all of them and can help you progress much faster. Its pretty hard to say that chemical engineers are weak at both chemistry and engineering, since you have to be the "strongest" engineer in the plant to run units optimally. We might not know everything, but we need a good grasp of everything to make the right decisions.

[dweeegs]

The lack of employment from people that graduated, the inability to do any research unless you're a PhD, and the pay. The chemistry department have a lot more girls in it which made it somewhat worthwhile haha

My brothers want to major in chemistry, I'm trying to get them change their minds

They have a romantic notion about chemistry that I'm trying to replace with practicality

EDIT: FREEEEEE



Plus exams

[MesoPeaks]

in

just got home. tired as fuark and now chillin in the misc

[axiom15]

In on this, never posted much in the other thread.
Got two semesters left. Pretty excited but I just bombed this past semester lol need to get my chit together.

I've gotten denied two internships this past summer and also the following. Haven't applied for jobs either.

[mciasto]

AE reporting in, currently getting raped by my only required ECE class: kc, kvl, diodes, op-amps, bjts, mosfet, logic, ect. idk how you fukkers do it.

[RussBuss]

Whats up brahs

ME with one and a half year left of school.

Going to be interning for Shell in Houston this upcoming summer, anyone other engineering brahs work for Shell or another Houston based company?

Any advice for the internship? Participated in a research based REU program last summer that was essentially an internship but I am expecting this to be a more accurate representation of working in Industry.

Go to FSU btw

[Dave3066]

Anyone here do patent law? I'm a senior in HS who's majoring in mechanical engineering and I'm interested in going to law school after I graduate.

[Killacam09]

Whats up brahs

ME with one and a half year left of school.

Going to be interning for Shell in Houston this upcoming summer, anyone other engineering brahs work for Shell or another Houston based company?

Any advice for the internship? Participated in a research based REU program last summer that was essentially an internship but I am expecting this to be a more accurate representation of working in Industry.

Go to FSU btw

Congrats on the Shell internship!
I don't have any advice just admiring, Petro-eng major here. Would love to get a internship there

Also what was the shell interview like?

[Purplekoolaid]

Whats up brahs

ME with one and a half year left of school.

Going to be interning for Shell in Houston this upcoming summer, anyone other engineering brahs work for Shell or another Houston based company?

Any advice for the internship? Participated in a research based REU program last summer that was essentially an internship but I am expecting this to be a more accurate representation of working in Industry.

Go to FSU btw

Passed their SRD for full-time, just waiting for an opening to pop up ;(

[TXDStone]

Whats up brahs

ME with one and a half year left of school.

Going to be interning for Shell in Houston this upcoming summer, anyone other engineering brahs work for Shell or another Houston based company?

Any advice for the internship? Participated in a research based REU program last summer that was essentially an internship but I am expecting this to be a more accurate representation of working in Industry.

Go to FSU btw

I had four friends intern for Shell this past summer and all at least somewhat liked it. I know one went with XOM for full time, another is going with Shell in New Orleans, and haven't asked the other two.

Congrats on the Shell internship!
I don't have any advice just admiring, Petro-eng major here. Would love to get a internship there

Also what was the shell interview like?

I've also interviewed with XOM and BP and I didn't like Shell's interview the most out of those three. I'm not sure how they interview interns anymore since my roommate interviewed last semester and supposedly the format was different from mine. When I interviewed it started with some behavioral type, and teamwork type questions. Then I was given three different scenarios and had to choose one, read about it, and then answer questions about it as if I was the CEO or other positions.

Passed their SRD for full-time, just waiting for an opening to pop up ;(

We're all gonna make it brah

[joebus36]

ME here about to be done semester 3 with ~57 credits down and a 3.5 GPA.

I got a ton of internship applications out now but haven't heard back from anyone yet. I'm interested in defense so I've been applying to places like Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and I got an application for an internship with the Air Force. I've also applied to a ton of random places on my schools career web page. Any recommendations where else I should apply? Besides the defense aspect, I'd be interested in any position that would allow me to be outdoors or on site.

[RussBuss]

ME here about to be done semester 3 with ~57 credits down and a 3.5 GPA.

I got a ton of internship applications out now but haven't heard back from anyone yet. I'm interested in defense so I've been applying to places like Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and I got an application for an internship with the Air Force. I've also applied to a ton of random places on my schools career web page. Any recommendations where else I should apply? Besides the defense aspect, I'd be interested in any position that would allow me to be outdoors or on site.

Look into REU programs if you cannot find an internship. Most deadlines are between Jan and March. They will pay about 5000 over the summer, non taxed. You will work under a PhD student and do hands on research. It isn't industry experience, but IMO at career fairs the REU program I did over the summer gave me a lot more to talk about than other candidates with internships. If you are only on semester 3, you can do an internship next summer. I did the REU program at FSU and worked with pressure sensitive paint visualizing the flowfield of a Mach1.5 impinging jet. It was very interested and a great experience. If you go to a shcool that has one, I would apply there because it led me to getting a research position during the school year as well. If not, apply all over the place, they will help with travel and housing expenses.

http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/

[RussBuss]

Congrats on the Shell internship!
I don't have any advice just admiring, Petro-eng major here. Would love to get a internship there

Also what was the shell interview like?

Mine was 100% behavioral along with a couple questions about what I knew about the company and why I wanted to work there. Shell was my first choice so I was very well prepared, along I definitely could have handled the behavioral questions better.

"Give an example of a time when you have had to be sensitive to someone cultural differences in the workplace?" Was the question that threw me off the most.

[mciasto]

Give an example of a time when you have had to be sensitive to someone cultural differences in the workplace?" Was the question that threw me off the most.

brutal

[Brad155]

EE with concentration in control/robotics checking in. One more semester to go brahs, we're gonna make it. Tuesday my final project for Robotics is due and then I have my final right after so I've got a long weekend, but after that I'm going to enjoy the month off.

[Killshot1]

Link to the first one: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=4571443

Welcome engineers

In.

[Nara62629]

Anyone here do patent law? I'm a senior in HS who's majoring in mechanical engineering and I'm interested in going to law school after I graduate.

my best friend is a patent attorney.

[Pr3y]

In on new thread, and subbed.

[M0hi]

1st year bioE reporting in. Technically sophomore standing as of right now.
I ****ed up and robbed myself of a 4.0, got an 89% in 1 of my classes.

Job Shadow/tour of a company on monday, my school has a guaranteed internship program which means I have an internship this summer, I just don't know where or what the hours are and I find out about it at end of spring semester.

Next semester taking 17 credit hours
CS class (C, C++, Matlab) --gonna be hard as **** because I suck at computer languages
200 level bio class (Homeostasis) --apparently hard according to upperclassmen bioE's
Calc II --shouldn't be too bad
English II -- easy A
Anthropology --interesting and easier A

I only took 14 my first semester of college because I didn't know what to expect, literally made me so lazy due to lack of work.

[migueloak]

We in this.

Graduating in May with a B.S. in Environmental Engineering.

Don't have a job yet.... fuuuuuuuuaaaaark

tfw the first thread was 5years old.

[Ownster8932]

Question: If 2 nodes have no components in between them, can I treat both nodes as a single node when doing nodal analysis? (circuits) lol I always mess this up.

If "two" nodes have no components between them, then they are in-fact ONE, single node. Meaning it is the same.

[cncman]

1st year bioE reporting in. Technically sophomore standing as of right now.
I ****ed up and robbed myself of a 4.0, got an 89% in 1 of my classes.

Job Shadow/tour of a company on monday, my school has a guaranteed internship program which means I have an internship this summer, I just don't know where or what the hours are and I find out about it at end of spring semester.

Next semester taking 17 credit hours
CS class (C, C++, Matlab) --gonna be hard as **** because I suck at computer languages
200 level bio class (Homeostasis) --apparently hard according to upperclassmen bioE's
Calc II --shouldn't be too bad
English II -- easy A
Anthropology --interesting and easier A

I only took 14 my first semester of college because I didn't know what to expect, literally made me so lazy due to lack of work.

fuking lol if you think calc II is going to be in the same universe as a phucking biology class

[jstoomz]

If "two" nodes have no components between them, then they are in-fact ONE, single node. Meaning it is the same.

Agree here. But if they do have a component between them you can sometimes treat both nodes as one supernode I believe.

Currently in Computer Engineering but not enjoying it so will be switching to either Civil or Chemical next year. Got Calc III and DE finals still left to do this semester.

[arekieh]

fuking lol if you think calc II is going to be in the same universe as a phucking biology class

This, bio classes are all pretty much straight memorization

[Ownster8932]

Fuarrkkkk. The City College of New York is only 7k a year AND has engineering programs. THIS IS IN MY RANGE MOTHER****ERS. Now I can think a little more realistically. My goal is to make really cool ****, either on my own or with a job. So I think that's leaning towards engineering more than physics itself. How did you guys decide which branch of engineering you wanted to do? Everything about what I really want to learn is leaning towards electrical but what do they do? I've always wanted to do astronautical as well because I think outer space is an electrical engineers playground.

But I still want to study physics...

I'm an EE who has taken 6 ME courses (sat in two others, for a total of 8) and studied CS and Aerodynamics on my own. So I've gotten a good taste of several subjects. Here is my reasoning for how I chose EE, a bit of my background, and what I think through my experience personally:

My dad, uncle, and grandpa are all EEs, so I was exposed to it from an early age. Anytime my game system, cell phone, computer, computer monitor, etc was messed up, I could give it to my dad to fix and boom it would work again. I thought that was really cool and something I wanted to be able to do when I was older. I was never once suggested to even do engineering by my family. I just thought it was really cool seeing my dad work on stuff and wanted to understand how all these things I were using worked.

Another thing that is interesting is my family's personal experience. I am French (first born outside of France on either side) and so my family went to college in France. Well there, it is completely different. It is (or at least was) a 5-year program where the first 3 years everybody studies together, meaning you learn about ME, EE, AE, ChE, etc. You also would go to engineering school, not university. So they went to a college that was strictly for engineering. What this also gave is a broad base of knowledge. So my uncle did Chem E, but decided he wanted to do EE instead. So after graduating, he worked exclusively as an EE (something that would not be possible here unless you took other classes out of interest). Anyways, so my dad also knew a lot about ME/AE and we would talk a lot about those topics and he was always explaining things about airplanes/cars to me. This was another area of knowledge then that I wanted to learn about, hence the ME/AE courses/self-study. If I could go back I would double major (still going to try and finish either a BS AE or ME though- just wish I had completed it while in school full-time rather than while working). I mostly just find the thermodynamics, fluid mechanics (aerodynamics is a subset of fluid mechanics), and heat transfer side of ME very interesting. The machine design stuff is not nearly as interesting to me.

As an EE, you get exposed to CS/CompE courses as well as they are subsets of EE (especially CompE is just specialized EE). It is important for engineers in general to have some programming know-how and being able to work with microcontrollers- this is especially true for EEs with embedded applications. So I've taken some programming/microprocessor courses/labs in my degree, but then I have also studied Python/C++ on my own. I also just got a Raspberry Pi to try and improve my skills for Christmas. I've also read a book about Data Structures. What I like about the programming aspect is that it is different in the way that it challenges you to think (IMO) while being a very desired/necessary skill for most EEs to have. Programming is also nice because all you need is your laptop (and microcontroller if you are programming one), whereas if you want to test a circuit you need a lab (and even more if trying to test something ME, lol).

My personality is very much more a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none type personality. I like to know a lot about a lot of different areas as opposed to one topic in extreme detail. I feel it is more useful outside of work and even for a LOT of jobs (being able to understand how a project will be affected by taking into consideration multiple aspects (EE/ME/CS) is very valuable).

What I also like about having studied two fields in decent detail (EE/ME) is when you start seeing the analogous equations describing entirely different physical phenomena. For example, in fluid mechanics, it is very similar to electromagnetics in mathematical description, but describing very different things. In heat transfer, I knew what the form of the final equation for temperature was going to be before the professor even derived it because of how similar it is to circuit analysis. It's very interesting. And in controls, you learn how to convert an electrical system into a mechanical one (inductors/capacitors/resistors to springs/masses/dampers) and vice versa. Meaning that if you had a mechanical system that you wanted to model, well you could transform it into an electrical circuit and simulate it or bread-board it and test it.

Now when it comes to learning about each field, I find ME to be easier conceptually and here's why: you can visualize a physical system with all of these forces acting on it. EE is a bit more abstract.

Both are very broad and have such a wide-range of areas to study that you would be sure to find something interesting in either one. I liked pretty much all areas of EE (liked all my course material) whereas with ME, I liked it all mostly, but definitely heavily preferred the thermo/fm/heat transfer side of things. You can't go wrong with either as they will both be in great need for the forseeable future.

I hope I answered your question for the most part and didn't ramble too much off topic, lol.

Agree here. But if they do have a component between them you can sometimes treat both nodes as one supernode I believe.

Currently in Computer Engineering but not enjoying it so will be switching to either Civil or Chemical next year. Got Calc III and DE finals still left to do this semester.

A supernode is one for which there is a voltage source between two nodes where one of the nodes is NOT ground.

[Sensei Squat]

The lack of employment from people that graduated, the inability to do any research unless you're a PhD, and the pay. The chemistry department have a lot more girls in it which made it somewhat worthwhile haha. I believe I made the right choice though. I'm paid much higher than any other of my old high school friends, and I get a lot more responsibilities than I would have as a chemist.

Career wise, for at least my plant that is, as a chemical engineer I have a lot more runway to do things than any other engineer in the plant. Chemical engineers are considered the "jack of all trades" for Koch/Flint Hills. We are supposed to know the units, the process, the equipment, the reliability of the equipment, we put input on the turnarounds and the maintenance, and we also supervise/manage a lot of what the operators do. Given, we don't have supervisional rights to all those plans, but even as a new hire you do play a large role on all of them and can help you progress much faster. Its pretty hard to say that chemical engineers are weak at both chemistry and engineering, since you have to be the "strongest" engineer in the plant to run units optimally. We might not know everything, but we need a good grasp of everything to make the right decisions.

That was one of the best brief summaries of the subject I have been asking about, thanks again.

[dweeegs]

Wanted to learn a language, might start over break and maybe take a class in the spring

Narrowed it down to French or German

Is either one more useful in the engineering world over the other? Does it even matter?

[arekieh]

Wanted to learn a language, might start over break and maybe take a class in the spring

Narrowed it down to French or German

Is either one more useful in the engineering world over the other? Does it even matter?

Maybe if theres a specific company you want to work at that is headquartered in france or germany?? Lol, can't see any other way it could help other than looking good on a resume.