Are there any chemistry and physics classes in Computer Science major? Are they elective or mandatory?
My major is of 3 years (Europe). So I don’t expect to have these two subjects.
Without knowing specifics, it is hard to say anything concrete, but in my experience, no, CS majors in general do not need to take chemistry or physics (although they do have to take more calculus than many would like 
).
I think you are right. There are no chemistry and physics classes.
BTW Calculus and math are good. I love them.
In my four-year CS program, one year of non-CS science credits were required, and I took Chemistry.
In the US college I attended, one of the differences between a BA and a BS in Computer Science was that the BS required a couple semesters of physics or chemistry while the BA did not.
Required for a major? That would be very unusual. I am not that familiar with European undergraduate programs but U.S. style ones typically require a comprehensive set of classes outside of your major to earn a BA or BS degree. Those could include everything from ancient history to fine art and some schools require a class or two in hard sciences like physics as well no matter what your major is. You get a choice on which classes you want to take to fulfill the requirements but you have to hit all of the required buckets. Students are also free to pursue any classes they want once they have all of the requirements fulfilled just to get to the required degree hours. It would not be unheard of at all to have Computer Science students take biology, physics or anything else but that is a personal decision not built into the degree requirements for a Computer Science major itself.
I took physics as part of my BS in CS, in the US. I did not take chemistry.
Poking around online, I found the current requirements at my university. It calls for either physics or chemistry.
It’s actually fairly common here in the US. A lot of CS programs are in engineering schools, and they require some number basic science courses as part of an engineering core. I believe it’s an ABET accreditation issue, although I’m not certain about that.
My school (UC Davis) actually had two CS programs; one in the school of engineering and one in Letters & Science. The engineering program (that I took) had a fairly heavy physics requirement; 4 quarters. The L&S version had just two quarters. Both, IIRC, had one quarter of chemistry.
The chem I could have done without, but the physics was IMO crucial, since it served as applied math. Math is of course essential, but knowing how to use it in real problems is not always obvious without physics (for instance, the connection between integrals/derivatives and distance/velocity/acceleration/etc.).
20+ years ago, my undergrad school offered a BS in Computer Science, and a BS in Computer Engineering.
The Computer Science degree required 2 sciences for 2 semesters each. The list that you could take was, IIRC, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, zoology, and I think, botany or something along those lines.
The Computer Engineering degree was more restrictive and required the same chemistry and physics courses that the engineering degrees required.
I receive a BS from a state university and satisfied the science requirement with an astronomy course.
The courses needed and allowed for majors, distribution requirements, and electives differs so wildly across universities in the U.S. that it’s nearly impossible to make any generalizations about them. What’s interesting about your question is that you ask if there are any elective courses in chemistry or physics that a computer science major can take. In the U.S., universities hardly ever put restrictions on what courses you can take if you really want to. The only thing they might tell you is “Well, you can take those extra courses that you want so badly that have nothing to do with your major or minor, but you should realize that you still have to take the standard courses in your major and minor, so the time you spend on those unrelated courses is going to stretch your time in college from four years to five years” or “Well, normally anyone can take any course they want, but this term we can’t teach as many offerings of that course as we’d like to because one of the professors who normally teaches it is on sabbatical, so we’re going to have to restrict the course to people who are majoring or minoring in the subject.”
Here’s another thought: If you want to learn something valuable, you need to take some other technical kind of classes along with your Computer Science. If you know all there is to know about computer programming, but not much else, you’re limited in what you can do.
Maybe you want to write the next killer Accounting app to put QuickBooks out of business. Then you need to know plenty about programming AND all there is to know about Accounting. Or maybe you’d like to do nuclear weapons research, which requires heavy-duty simulations. For this, you need to know plenty about programming AND plenty of Nuclear Physics AND plenty of Math. Or maybe you’ll simply be the programmer for a supermarket chain, maintaining their databases of products and customers and employees and assets, etc. For this you need to know programming (databases in particular) AND a whole lot about how the retail business works. (This is what I’ve been doing a lot, for the past few years.)
The point is, programming skill all by itself only has certain limited usefulnesses. To be a really useful programmer, you need to know Programming thoroughly AND you need to know some other technical field thoroughly.
I got a BS in CS from University of Missouri - Rolla back in the 80’s. I took two terms of physics and one of chemistry, both including labs. We also had a couple requirements from the Electrical Engineering department.
40 years ago (and I assume today) MIT required 2 terms of physics and one term of Chem for everyone. Luckily when I was a freshman the hated and feared 5.01, intro do Chemistry, was being revised so EE/CS majors got to take metallurgy - which was a snap because the professor didn’t much believe in homework or quizzes.
Physics is good to know, chemistry I’m not sure of. Not having had really chem never hurt me.
An acquaintance of mine majoring in Computer Engineering complained out loud to no one in particular about taking the one term of required chemistry. It seemed obvious to me that knowing things down to the bare metal required at least the basics of college-level chemistry – maybe to do with fab processes of etch and semiconductors, maybe because…I don’t know.
What is the right answer to my “friend”'s complaint, anyway?
What I thought was curious is that I’ve never heard anyone complain about the year of physics with calculus (that I think CS students are obliged to take as well at some places) – not sure why that is, exactly.
I suppose the double standard might be that it’s easy to see physics as essentially an applied math, from the POV of a student who is interested in abstractions, like, I assume, CS students – to keep your chops up in taking basic integrals and derivatives and doing fancier things with multivariable calculus as in Maxwell’s equations and so forth. I hated what they called Calculus IV (on a quarterly system) – all that gook about stupid graphs and pictures. Makes sense for physics, though.
When I took my Computer Science degree (in NZ), I could choose between the Schools of Science, Mathematics and Computer Science, or Social Science - and there may have been options as well.
As I already had a BSc (in chemistry) and enough core math and first year CompSci subjects, I choose the school of Social Science, allowing me to add Philosophy, Logic, English, and Music into my degree. I don’t regret the decision, as all the essay writing I did has served me in good stead over the years. But I sometimes wonder if I could have jumped back into science and completed a triple major BSc in Physics (I had all my second year papers and only needed the third year papers), Computer Science, and Chemistry. It would have been a pretty intense two years, though.
Yeah, I think at my school, you had to take one gen-ed science course for a BA, or a ‘harder’ science requirement for a BS. Both could be something like Astronomy if you liked. Neither requirement was specific to Comp Sci, but you could only get a degree in Comp Sci in one faculty or the other.
Comp Sci did have math requirements; Calculus, Logic, and Discrete Math.
There’s not really an answer that applies all across Europe. There’s not even an answer that applies all across one country (e.g. the UK). As an undergraduate in Scotland I did not have to take physics or chemistry classes. Entering as a fresher, you could pick an external course to take in the first year, another in the second, finally converting that course (if you picked the same one across the first two years of your degree) into either a formal component of your final degree (i.e. getting a joint degree) or dropping it altogether.
Conversely, the university that I currently work at has a crazy system where many first year CS students really got admitted into the University under the “Natural Science Tripos” (a weird degree combining biology, chemistry and physics, where you can be as general or specific as you like), may switch to CS for the long haul or may drop it completely after six months, and will have mandatory biology, physics and chemistry lessons.
I never felt disadvantage in not having had chemistry or physics lessons as an undergraduate computer scientist. Looking at the job market outside academic, I feel disadvantaged in not knowing more biology.
At my school (U of Arizona) it’s required to take two semesters of a natural science with a lab section, which in practice means Biology, Chemistry, or Physics.