First off, what’s the difference between having a degree in chemical engineering vs. a degree in chemistry?
Secondly, why is this duality only for chemistry? You can’t get a degree in “electricity” (which would coincide with electrical engineering), and you can’t get a degree in “mechanics” (which would coincide with mechanical engineering). Just curious why we do this for chemistry.
You can get a degree in Biology or Bioengineering or Biomedical Engineering.
Chemical Engineering is an Engineering degree and a degree in Chemistry is (typically) a Liberal Arts degree. Clear enough?
Engineering degrees focus on learning how to solve engineering problems. Sure, ChemE’s have to take a lot of chemistry, but they also take a lot of Fluid Dynamics, Mass Transfer, Heat Transfer, and a bunch of math that allows one to understand these concepts so they can use them to solve practical problems (well, practical to a ChemE, that is). A person with a Chemistry major in a Liberal Arts program is not likely to to have much (if any) exposure to these outside what they might get in a standard physics course. The ChemE student not only has to take the chemistry courses (taught by the Chemistry Department) needed for the degree in chemistry, he must also take the engineering courses (taught by the Chemical Engineering department) as well as basic electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and materials courses.
Not to say that a Liberal Arts degree with a degree in Chemistry is in any way easy, but to give you an idea, when I went to college, the college of Liberal Arts told students they had to take a minimum of 12 hours (of classes) to be a full-time student, were advised to take 14 hours, and had to have written approval from their academic advisor to schedule more than 16 hours. The college of Engineering recommended their freshmen take 17 hours and could take up to 21 hours before specific authorization was needed.
The result is that while a ChemE graduate could perform well in a commercial chemical laboratory, as well as be just as likely to be accepted for an program for an advanced degree in Chemistry, he would also be at home in, say, a chemical plant making sure the chemical reactors are performing efficiently and safely. Not that a Chemistry major couldn’t figure any of that stuff out, but he would require a lot more support.
As the son of a chemical engineer, my mom’s response is thus:
A chemist is more focused on the…wait for it…chemistry. While the engineer is more broadly trained on how to solve practical problems with chemicals/chemistry. She worked for decades at the gas company dealing with gas transfer problems/projects.
Engineering should, if it’s engineering, incorporate an element of design. So, the study and practice of chemical engineering should, at the least, include some notion of ‘systems’ (for a vaguely defined notion of a ‘system’) and how to leverage our knowledge of chemistry to some sort of directed end.
Note that this duality DOES occur with electrical and mechanical engineering as well. Electricity and mechanics are studied under the umbrella of physics. For example, there are some very interesting questions of how electrical fields may behave at quantum scales.
There is some overlap, of course, but using the same example an electrical engineering researcher is more likely to study how to take advantage of those discoveries in quantum in the context of solid state circuits.
You can definitely get a degree by doing research in electricity or mechanics. Except the diploma would say “physics” because both are fields of physics.
There is a similar duality between biology/biochemistry and medicine. Though in this case, it’s fairly common to do both - it’s called an MD-Ph.D program.
I know you can do quite well with just an undergraduate degree in an engineering major, like chemical engineering. But can you get that far with just an undergraduate degree in chemistry? I think you need to get a master’s or even a PhD.
It’s called a “physics” degree.
Although to be fair, those parts of physics have migrated to the High School curriculum.
Also, you can get a degree in environmental engineering, or in environmental science.
A friend of mine is a materials engineer, but as far as I know, there’s no such thing as a degree in materials.
You can get a degree in civil engineering, but not a degree in civility!
The classical mechanics course was the most difficult course I took in college (as part of a physics degree) and that was just the undergrad level course.
I am a ChemE and high five to other ChemEs who have posted above. It’s been well explained above.
It is obvious that Chemical engineers design and work with processes involving traditional chemicals but some are not so obvious like : Wine making or Brewing or Semiconductors or greenhouse gas reduction or textiles …
In essence it’s like all other engineering where you take principles from basic sciences and integrate it into solutions.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) publishes a comprehensive pipe code that “covers Power Piping, Fuel Gas Piping, Process Piping, Pipeline Transportation Systems for Liquid Hydrocarbons and Other Liquids, Refrigeration Piping and Heat Transfer Components and Building Services Piping”.
Care to guess what sort of engineer is likely to be intimately familiar with the ASME pipe code? Hint: it isn’t mechanical engineers.
Not in my experience. EDIT: Which is to say that I agree with you. You needed the graduate degree to do anything lucrative or interesting.
When I graduated with a BS Biochem degree, it basically qualified me to be a lab tech: make and run gels, wash glassware, operate equipment. It did not have anything like the career opportunities my sister in law ChemE had after graduation. My impression was that most of my fellow graduates were headed to graduate school or professional school (Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy was really popular.) Whereas with my in law, the feeling was that you headed off to work. Graduate Engineering degrees were if you wanted to teach, or get certified as a PE.
Dag, I’d think CivE before another discipline, when it came to knowing about piping. Although it seemed the in law’s work was always about sizing one sort of pump or another. I do remember she had a hell of a lot more math coursework than I did.
Civil engineers will be pumping water, sewage, and perhaps sludge of some sort. Mechanical engineers will be pumping water, water/glycol, steam/condensate, maybe some oil or refrigerants. Chemical engineers will be pumping all sorts of fluids at all sorts of temperatures, pressures, viscosity, and other properties - think refineries, chemical production plants, mining and smelting operations, food processing, etc. I’m a bit in awe of the engineers who know that stuff.
You do not need a graduate degree to obtain a Professional Engineer certification, and in fact many if not most of the PEs I’ve known did not have graduate degrees in their discipline.
Chemical engineering is largely focused on process and the design and control of systems that handle ‘chemicals’ in some way, shape, or form. Chemical engineers have the fundamental coursework in organic and inorganic chemistry but as excavating (for a mind) notes most of their coursework is actually in what are traditional mechanical engineering areas of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, materials science, and basic mechanics (statics and dynamics) as well as several courses in controls, while chemistry students will only touch on these areas briefly and at more theoretical level if in any detail. In contrast, an undergraduate chemistry program will focus on basic and advanced fundamentals in chemistry, including qualitative analysis, the theory of advanced organic and inorganic chemistry, and introductory quantum physics as it applies to chemistry, as well as a lot of laboratory classwork.
In more prosaic terms, a chemist is who you would call to synthesize a novel chemical formulation or analyze an unknown compound; a chemical engineer is who you would employ to build or run a facility to manufacture or refine a substance on a production scale, or manage a facility to do the same. At an undergraduate level there is remarkably little overlap in coursework, although at a graduate level it is certainly possible that the focus on thesis work for a chemical engineering student might veer toward more theory, or that a chemist might end up taking courses in engineering because it fits their research interest.
Stranger
In Spain one would be an Engineering Degree and the other would be a Science Degree. Under the current model, both are considered “Level A Sciences”, meaning the kind of courses of study which spend at least half the time doing some sort of lab work. When I was in college, Engineering and Architecture required a “Project” (think design or research thesis) whereas Chemistry, Biology or Physics did not. Therefore, people who tell me “oh, you’re a chemist” are likely to get a response of “no sir, I did a Project!”
The conclusion from a Chemist who wanted to know what the heck was so special about us (back then mine was the only school in the country giving ChemE) after we spent an hour dissecting our respective courses of study was “OK, so we focus on labwork and you focus on factory work.” I’d been required to take Electronics, Mass and Heat Transfer or Intro to Accounting, which she hadn’t. She’d had more hours of lab dedicated to Orgo and to Analytical Chemistry, making up for the hours they didn’t spend in the lab for Electronics or Transfer; total amount of time spent in the lab was about the same (not counting the Project).
From a different one “damn, but you guys ARE good at problem-solving!”, after I’d been able to figure out that the problem her lab had been having with a specific machine was in fact caused by the maintenance guy: they needed to readjust the electric field, not change the reagents.
Materials Science is a specialty within Physics.
I have a chemistry degree and I can remember embarrassingly little of it (I graduated over 20 years ago and haven’t worked in that field since 2000). But what I do recall is that we learned a lot about the fundamentals of why chemicals react in the way that they do, and what should theoretically happen if you mix X and Y, but rather little about the practicalities of designing a reaction to mix X and Y to make Z in any kind of scale. I assume that is more the chem eng area.
BS Chem E here, who has not used much of the specific domain knowledge in far too many decades.
When I was doing my original job hunting ca 1979-80, and in my first job too, almost all of the engineers who dealt with piping in a non-toy way (I remember mostly heat exchanger designers and distillation column designers) were in fact degreed mechanical engineers. Maybe things are different now?
My undergrad diploma (1992) says, “Electrical and Computer Engineering.”
I’ve always hated that.
My graduate diploma (2009) simply says, “Electrical Engineering.”
I like that better.