Chemical or Mechanical Engineering???

Question

I am currently an undergrad who wants to switch to either of these two majors.

I was wondering which major is better/more interesting and which would be more worthwhile?

Answer 1

Wow...good question.

Much of the curriculum is the same (at least when I went to school for chem E it was). Materials Science/lab, thermodynamics, controls.

But the bottom line for me is what do you like better? As a chemical engineer, I work as a process engineer in industry, specifically as a process engineer. I design and maintain and document equipment that uses chemicals to clean, coat, plate, etc. In order to do my job effectively, I need to use mechanical engineers because I have never had to learn anything like mechanical drawing or AutoCAD (or a similar program). The mechanical engineers that I know have done a lot of design work - and deal mostly with assembly equipment, tolerancing, documentation/prints.

So bottom line is...what do you find more interesting? Mechanical is more math in my opinion - chemical uses math, but a lot more chemistry oriented.

Both are needed in industry. Mechanicals are probably more the "everyday" engineer - everyone needs mechanicals whereas chemicals generally work in specific industries (or if you are in my industry, there are just a few of us).

Answer 2

Chemical.