BF2S Forums Are there any engineers in the house?

Depends, Do you want to be a nerd the rest of your life, or do you want to get into a Trade eg: Metal engineering/fabricating etc.

Im studying to be a Chemical and Biomolecular Engineer...

I'd recommend it only if you really like chemistry, I've taken 5 chem classes in two semesters, along with calculus and physics.

Whichever one you choose, I hope you're good at math.

BTW, Chem Engineers start at $80,000-$100,000 a year, and will be in heavy demand in the next decade, so make sure you factor that in to your decision, not all fields have openings.

Last edited by S.Lythberg (2008-01-24 06:05:28)

I'm a mechanical engineer. I chose this path because I couldn't do electrical engineering to save my life. I'd rather visualize it physically than have to look at a waveform graph to understand what is going on.

Like a few others have said, it's damn cool to be able to say, I know why that works that way. That and you get paid for it. Designing with 3D cad software is nice, as well as doing analysis on the part you just made to find out whether or not the part you made will fail under certain loading conditions. I found it to be very rewarding but incredibly challenging. For example, for my Computer Aided Engineering class, we had a project to do at the end of the semester. We had to take some assembly and run analysis on it. At the beginning of the semester we went and had a meeting with the professor and submitted our proposal as to what we wanted to do. I did a Swiss Army Knife, which proved to be a bear of a project. Unfortunately, there weren't any dimensions online for it, so I bought a cheap one and spent a day taking it apart and getting the dimensions of each part. Spent lots of time on ProEngineer generating the parts and creating the assembly, and then I ran some analysis on some of the parts, as if they were being loaded in real life. For example, I loaded the end of the corkscrew to simulate putting the corkscrew into a wine bottle, and was able to find where the highest stresses were. I could then compare those to the yield strength of the material to check and see if the part would fail. It was very cool to do, but I probably spent a total of 60 hours on that project alone.

Additionally, we actually worked with a company our senior year as part of our Senior Project. Ultimately, my group was able to recommend a new material for an airplane application to BAE Systems by the end of the year, and there's a good chance that they might actually be using it. A bunch of my friends got involved in the Mini Baja, and the mini Formula car competitions. They built those cars from the ground up, and were impressive to see.

You will get the old academic dick in the ass, a lot. Be prepared to do lots and lots of work. I typically did homework and projects up until midnight every night, and dedicated my entire Sunday to homework. I found with engineering classes that even if you spend a ton of time studying for an exam, you can still fuck it up horrendously.

Becoming a mechanical engineer is easily the best decision I've ever made.

Me, I'm going for aerospace.

However, I hear there's a demand for nuclear engineers, mostly because of the possible end of oil power and our need for alternative sources.

rdx-fx hit the nail on the head with both his posts. Funny thing about the right hand rule, in the couple of different courses you will take, you will see the entire class moving their hands all over the place to find the direction of torque during an exam. Would by comical thing for someone to walk by and see I'm sure.

Also, like he said, you will be trained in how to solve problems and think thing through analytically using applied physics and math. From that strong backbone, you can then migrate into other fields a bit easier than if you were just to go cold turkey into EE from nothing. For example, circuits and circuit diagrams are extremely analogous to spring-mass-damper systems (Vibrations) in ME.

Difference between technicians and engineers:
Technicians know how to use an equation and have basic understanding of it, but engineers know the theory behind it, and so can interpret it into different applications.

My great-grandad was an engineer... it does pay off you know, he invented an auxillery air pump for the coal mines in the 1950's i think, and it was called the "compact" because it was so small.
Took him and his partner 3 years and his reward was...











_{A small article in a newspaper with the picture featuring the compact and the left side of his body.}

That could be you one day.

Haha, thanks for the tip rdx. Fortunately I'm a visual thinker and I am able to visualize it, so I rarely sit there staring at my hand. Also, a lot of people teach the weird L-shaped thingy, but I prefer the "point the thumb and then curl your fingers and that's the direction" way.

TimmmmaaaaH wrote:

mtb0minime wrote:

Haha, thanks for the tip rdx. Fortunately I'm a visual thinker and I am able to visualize it, so I rarely sit there staring at my hand. Also, a lot of people teach the weird L-shaped thingy, but I prefer the "point the thumb and then curl your fingers and that's the direction" way.

Is that to do with magnetic field on a wire when current is flowing?

Cause I did that in year 12  physics last year, so I am assuming it is something else.

It's one of these two.

TimmmmaaaaH wrote:

I c

So I was half right.

You were both right and wrong at the same time.  Heisenberg says so.

Right hand rule is applied to a lot of things. Current flow and induced magnetic field is one. You can also use it for vectors in calculus, as well as setting up a sign convention of a segment of a beam when it comes to showing axial, shear, and bending moment forces.

cowami wrote:

Me, I'm going for aerospace.

However, I hear there's a demand for nuclear engineers, mostly because of the possible end of oil power and our need for alternative sources.

I mostly likely will be too.

Do you have any idea what money they make?

I was a "Software Engineer" for the first few years of my career. I have always had hard time coupling those two words together since I feel that the occupation lacks the accountability that true engineers have.

im a mechanical engineer

in training