Of course, the boundaries between disciplines are fuzzy at best, but there must be some reason why these are considered separate. Is it historical? Or are there genuine differences in the sort of questions they address?
I believe that Chemistry is more theoretical and leans toward academia, while Chemical Engineering is an Engineering discipline that is more geared to using chemistry to accomplish something of value and also covers engineering principles such as planning and whatnot. In a sense, I think it’s similar to the difference between Physics and Mechanical Engineering.
So, in a sense, the Chemistry major may be leaning more toward going into professorhood and research into the chemistry questions of our time, while the Chemical Engineering major is looking forward to designing oil plants or figuring out how to get 100 gallons of H2SO4 at some purity level by next Thursday without spending more than $10,000.
Chemical engineering is about taking laboratory-scale processes and turning them into industrial-scaled production.
Materials science is more narrowly focused than chemistry in the sense that it concentrates primarily on solids and can be subdivided into metallurgy, ceramics/glass and plastics. It is also more broadly focused in the sense that it covers not just the chemistry but mechanical, electrical and optical properties to name a few.
I am a chemical engineer - and probably the question I face the most is “What attracted you to chemistry :smack: ?”
Here’s a good page explaining what Chemical engineering is and how it is not Chemistry - http://www.ceb.cam.ac.uk/exemplarch2002/mcp21/index.html
I know chemical engineers who have a career using chemical engineering principles in developing and manufacturing medicines, brewing beer and food processing, fixing environmental problems, working for NASA designing combustion parts, developing plastics that go into your iphone, developing technologies that make the semiconductors for your phones and PCs, refining oil - and a gamut of other technologies.
As part of chemical engineering curricula - we study basics of all engineering disciplines - Mechanical - Civil - etc. - the reverse is not true though.
Sort of, but you are missing the middle ground. Most chemists do not get careers in academia. There is plenty of research going on in industry, and that requires people trained in research. That includes chemists and physicists. While chemical engineers do occasionally do research, they are not trained in it. If you hire chemical engineers to make a new type of drug/adhesive/semi-conductor out of yams, you are looking at the wrong people.
There can be a lot of cross work, but the engineers I know don’t have the right problem solving skills for research, and the scientists I know couldn’t engineer a pot to boil water. My workplace is about 50/50 and with the exception of management, there is zero crossing. Management is about 50/50 as well discounting the non science business types.
Chemists typically fall into either the drug/biochemistry arena or the materials science arena. There are also biomaterials and other crazy hybrids. Materials scientists can range from biology to physics. The divisions are muh less clear than they used to be. Old school pure chemistry is much less common now. Many Nobel Prize winners are not really well described as chemists anymore.
I humbly disagree with that statement. Chemical engineers are actively involved in doing exactly the above three - I have grad school friends doing them. It depends on your definition of “new” though. You are right that a Chemical engineer will not look into fundamental chemistry of new drugs - but Chemical engineers bring out new drugs by making separations possible which were previously not possible. The coating on drugs to make them more effective and target release in effective areas of the alimentary canal is also Chemical engineering. I can give other examples, if necessary.
Thanks unfortunate - maybe you do not work with good engineers. In my school, the Chemical Engineering department used to have the biggest research budget and salary wise starting Chemical Engineering salaries have been the highest for the last 10 years or so.
The only bad engineers I’ve run into are the ones that don’t recognize this difference in training. These are the resentful engineers that have genuinely convinced themselves that the extra five years I spent doing research at school didnt teach me anything that their four years of undergrad didnt teach them. It must simply amaze them that chemists get jobs at all, yet there are industrial research jobs where their supreme four year degree does not even qualify them for.
It is true though that chemical engineers typically do get paid more. Chemical engineering is a much more marketable skill, particularly in an economy where budgets are tightening. Research is an amazingly expensive endeavor.