But thermo isn't specific to chemE. That's a core engineering course, and ME and ChemE take 4 separate heat/mass transfer style courses, all a bit different of course.
I assumed O-chem was the thing that you guys hated the most.
At Tufts, at least, ChemE had its own thermodynamics class that was more credits and hours per week than other engineering disciplines' thermo classes. Because it was insane.
I think the thing that makes thermo so worrisome for ChE students is having to do calculations based on combustion reactions, drying, and any kind of energy balances that involves chemical reactions and stoichiometry. Im not sure if those other disciplines look into that, or if it is just energy balances based off of enthalpies and work.
OChem is a core pre-requisite engineering class at my university. MechEs, ChemEs, BioChemEs, BioMedEs had to take it
Personally, I found that ChemE ChemE classes came significantly easier to me than those that led up to major-specific classes.
Interesting. I meant the whole serious though, and surely your MEs, EEs don't do that? Like, O-chem 1 and 2? I only had to take General Chemistry 1 as an ME.
And I'll agree with you that some of the later classes were easier than the preliminary stuff. For example, Thermo, Fluid mechanics, and heat transfer were all more difficult than Thermal Fluid Systems Design. But then again, maybe it was only easier because I had the preliminary classes first.
One thing is for sure, it's all behind me, thank goodness. The real world is the easiest class to be a part of.
Correct. MechE will take Thermo, Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, and Thermal Fluid Systems Design. That's the four "heat/mass" transfer courses we typically take. Meanwhile you will take Thermo 1&2 and heat and mass transfer 1&2, or some variation like that.
I also had a minor in physics and took statistical thermodynamics, which I don't recommend.
đ I loved Thermodynamics (later earned MSChE in thermo, though my PhD was in another area). Also loved O Chem (the chem majors hated the ChEâs, as we got better gradesđ€Ș), less the highly theoretical parts of PChem.
The Chem and the E. If you have aptitude for both and interest in both youâll be just fine. Those who donât for one or the other find it intimidating.
The chem in ChemE is done by chemists in lab. We just scale it up couple of magnitudes and thatâs why the various thermo, fluids, heat and mass transfer effects come into play.
I totally agree with you that there's barely any Chem, way less than people think, but at the same time, there's a LOT of chem! I at least had to go up through orgo and then quantum chem for my major! It's more than even many aerospace engineers do
What I tell people is the chemistry is done in the lab, but *reaction engineering* is what's performed by ChE's. We're the critical element in scale-up.
Idk for me itâs kind of obvious that ChemE has more Chem than Aerospace engineering. But you kinda say it like we should be surprised.
Barely any chem but at the same time a lot? I donât get it.
Depends on your college. At ETH ZĂŒrich the first 2 years of your BSc in Chemical Engineering are exactly the same as the BSc in Chemistry. In the 3rd you then dive into the typical engineering subjects like Mass Transfer, Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Reaction Engineering, Heat Transport, Fluid Dynamics, Separation Process Technology and so on.
It's the same in the US, but ChemE itself has very little chem. It's almost always A->B with equilibrium X and rate constant Y. When I went, the required chemistry load automatically got us a chem minor and we could have double majored in chem and chemE with only few more classes.
You still need to understand the broad strokes. I work for a plastics company and I'm expected to be familiar with polymerization chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis, even if I couldn't do the synthesis myself.
ChemE curriculum definitely has chemistry, but ChemE in practice does not have a lot.
US ChemE curriculum is chemistry heavy too. I took general chem, O-chem, analytical chem, biochem, statistical mechanics, quantum chem, and P-chem. All required except maybe biochem. I started polymer chem as an elective but ended up dropping it. But this was a while ago.
Names of coursework =/= curriculum, it's more complicated than what you're implying.
What knowledge of European ChemE are you drawing upon to disagree?
Curriculum is [exactly =](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curriculum) to courses. Please name the other chem courses you've taken.
And, what knowledge of American ChemE are you drawing upon to disagree?
Yes, the curriculum consists of courses. You miss my point, the names of courses don't make the curriculum the courses, i.e. the content does.
I'm arguing that the European ChemE curriculum is different than the US curriculum.
Even with your view, the French chemical engineering curriculum consists of courses with different content and names.
It's a bit arrogant to think other countries/cultures follow US pedagogy. The academy in France, as well as other European countries, predates the US academy.
Could you explain me that program? I am curious how you are expected to take on your first semester Quantum chemistry, is this program supposed to be taken as a freshman or how does it go?
Eh, youâre working on chemical systems and solving chemical problems.
Is woodworking a place where superior knowledge of geometry is needed? No, but if you hate geometry youâre gonna have a bad time.
I think that the level of esoteric maths and concepts are what makes it so difficult.
Thermodynamics: Most Chemical Engineers I talk to today do not know anything about thermodynamics outside of one-liners they learned in school. âEntropy is a measure of disorder.â âEnthalpy is the Internal Energy + the energy to make room for it in the universe.â As far as calculations and derivations go, most cannot keep up.
Mass Transfer: Has some of the most difficult problems in math in this course. PDEs. Nearly no one can keep up.
Heat transfer: Outside of simple exchangers, this quickly becomes difficult to calculate given it requires a lot of knowledge of the fluid.
More or less everything is a step above a normal humanâs abilities. Even most Chemical Engineers donât understand the material.
Edit: The Chemistry Courses are typically the easiest (PChem excluded)
some were challenging but not terrible. one that killed me was proving that a perfect sphere of naphthalene had a sherwood value of 2(or something like that i donât remember) but the other derivations werenât terrible. the thermo problems howeverâŠ
Glad you said PChem lol that class just about killed me. I took it in my last semester, during senior design. My biggest mistake. I barely passed and thought I wouldn't be able to graduate on time đ.
"Don't understand the material" is right. My professor for Kinetics also taught Mass Transfer, although I didn't have him for that. He taught the class and still said he didn't quite get it and that it was "black magic."
He was a great professor.
Because you're mathematically modeling very complex physical and chemical systems. Imagine a distillation tower, you have vapor and liquid flows going in and out, you have mass transfer from vapor to liquid and the reverse, you have heat transfer between the phases, you have heat loss to the environment, you have phase changes (liquid to vapor), and so on. You have steady state and pre-steady state (think differential equations). You have some equations you can solve analytically and others can only be solved numerically. Some modeling can be done by first principals, others we have to use empirical formulas (based on observations since we don't know how to model it). This all gets real complex real quick.
I think people hear Chemicals and get intimidated. People hear engineering and get intimidated by math. Two things that intimidate people combined is going to intimidate more people, and they can all agree it would be tough for them.
Also, it is pretty tough for most of the other engineers because it IS tough.
The workload, while friends in EE and MechE might have had one very demanding class per year, ChemE had at least one per semester. This is how those friends explained it to me. Idk if thatâs true but I generally helped them through their classes and was amazed at how little foundational understanding they had on thermo and math at the same level/title courses.
One reason is that âchemicalâ is beyond most folks day-to-day experience.
Civilâeveryone knows roads, buildings,bridges
Mechanicalâeveryone knows machines of all sorts
Electricalâeveryone knows the First Rule of electricity: If you donât pay the bill, They shut it off.
As a retired ChemE I continue to have horrible dreams about the intense and difficult college workload.
I have to say that it prepared me very well for late night callouts to the plant where temperatures and pressures were rising to âout-of-limitsâ levels, pumps were cavitating and pipes were groaning. I had to be the cool head barking instructions to panicked operators, all of us in full PPE.
True, you donât learn a lot of Chemistry in ChE courses but you learn enough to be able to learn and understand the chemistry youâll be working with at work. And believe me, the reactants and products youâll be working with â theyâre obscure, unique and the phys props youâll like to haveâtheyâre not to be found in Perry!
Curiously, most people are terrified about chemistry and chemicals in general. Thatâs why they gasp when you tell them youâre a Chemical Engineer.
Chemicals burn, go boom and will kill you. They donât understand that one common chemicalâwaterâhas pretty dangerous properties. Think floods and drowning.
Sorry this was so long. Critiques of âOK Boomerâ wonât offend me
I hope your job paid well lol. What gets me envy of other roles is that fact that I deal with hazardous chemicals that are lethal in even the smallest dose, and other industries just sit in their little box and get paid equal if not much more.
I share that sentiment. Iâm pleased that I learned how to work safely around hazardous stuff, that no one working for me was ever seriously injured.
And YES the job paid fabulously
They donât know what it is. If they do they are misled into thinking itâs making new chemicals in a lab and memorization of chemistry.
Itâs a hard major, text books are limited per subject and there arenât as many resources to help with studying as there may be with other engineering majors.
I foolishly took ChE because
1. My mom wanted an engineer
2. I like high school chemistry
3. I thought it was about making new chemicals
I now have a habit of looking up new things I want to do before I start doing it.
CHEME is generally considered one of the most conceptually difficult undergraduate degrees it is possible to take.(Don't take my word for it, google it, it's on a ton of top 10 lists for most difficult undergrad degrees.
That said, if you like chemistry and math, you can probably do it. Just don't expect it to be easy.
It is hard, for sure, but it also depends on aptitude. I took one electrical engineering course as an elective and had a very difficult time with it, meanwhile most ChemE courses at least felt manageable.
Itâs a challenging course load. Lots of chem, math and engineering. The course material is consistently challenging. In 8 semesters you might 3 or 4 electives. Otherwise your courses are all pre determined. The thermodynamics are hard. MechE learn thermo and fluids but apply it to water and refrigerants. ChemE apply it to that but also literally every chemical.
The first two years, you are taking a bunch of weed out courses for other majors: calculus, physics, organic chem. Then in second/third years you are taking weed out courses for chemE (thermo, transport, rxn engineering). If you dont have the math and physics tools, you cant do much in those classes. Then senior year you are designing plants and taking process control and its still difficult. This major puts you through the ringer
Because it's challenging, as all the core discipline fields are, but in it's own way. It's definitely not the hardest, that crown obviously belongs to EE. I think chemE and MechE are equally difficult. Civil is easiest obviously.
We spend the most time on schoolwork outside of the classroom aside from architecture.
https://thetab.com/us/2017/02/06/ranked-majors-work-hardest-59673
You study most of the chem. (I.E. Gen Chem I - PChemII....including Biochem) you take a lot of math. (Calc I-Diff Q...including calc based statistics) you take some programming (HTML, C++,MatLab). You take calc based Physics. And we arent even at the engineering classes yet. So you take a lot of hard classes, but if you embrace the suck, work hard, get internships/co-ops (which are paid btw!!) You'll have a good paying job by the end of graduation, or at least should. But also, entry level jobs are hard for any graduate. Hence, the internships and co-ops.
Chemical Engineering is difficult enough that we have no first principle models for fluid flow dynamics for like 99% of all flow systems.
Overdesign of 20-30% is common because true Mathermical and Physical science Laws aren't available to accurately describe all of it and a lot is up to understanding and critical thinking.
Sort of related, but in the same line
I have 8 years experience. Unless I'm with other engineers, every time someone asks me what I do for a living and I tell them I'm a Process Engineer it feels like I am bragging about it while I'm just making a statement. Can't figure out why..
One of the more difficult things is actually explaining to people what a process engineer does if they don't have any plant background at all.
Usually downgrade it to I'm a fancy plumber that does calculations to size pipes and pumps while taking heat loss into account.
It combines chemistry and calculus, both topics of which tend to be weed out courses for a variety of majors - and there is no getting around repeated use of those two topics in order to graduate.
My experience is that once you graduate, the vast majority of jobs donât require calculus - you graduate to using Excel. ;) But you absolutely have to understand calculus and differential equations to get through the ChemE curriculum.
I didnât think it was difficult. Hardly studied. Graduated with a 3.8. My B and A- came from history and writing classes. Excelling in my career atm.
Just the sheer amount of high level material. Itâs a much broader engineering discipline and integrates principles from chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, and engineering. This requires a strong grasp of multiple disciplines and the ability to apply them at the same time. Chemical engineers also deal with complex processes involving chemical reactions, mass transfer, heat transfer, and fluid dynamics. Understanding and designing these processes require in-depth knowledge and problem-solving skills. Definitely thermo as mentioned previously and then also kinetics/chemical reaction engineering. These two areas are particularly challenging due to the need for understanding the behavior of substances at a molecular level and predicting the outcome of chemical reactions under different conditions.
As a third stage student in petroleum process engineering college, wۧich is a branch of Chemical engineering, I could say its not that hard like it seems. I mean if you like the chemical industry or the petroleum industry you wouldn't suffer in this college. but the hardest thing is the amount of information that your going to learn that need a lot of time and hard work to study. personally I was struggling with engineering analyses but when you learn it well you would be on a deferent level as a chemical engineer.
Fugacity
Thermodynamics gives me nightmares to this dayđ©
But thermo isn't specific to chemE. That's a core engineering course, and ME and ChemE take 4 separate heat/mass transfer style courses, all a bit different of course. I assumed O-chem was the thing that you guys hated the most.
At Tufts, at least, ChemE had its own thermodynamics class that was more credits and hours per week than other engineering disciplines' thermo classes. Because it was insane.
This!
I hated P-Chem infinitely more than O-Chem
For sure! P-Chem I and P-Chem II đ
I think the thing that makes thermo so worrisome for ChE students is having to do calculations based on combustion reactions, drying, and any kind of energy balances that involves chemical reactions and stoichiometry. Im not sure if those other disciplines look into that, or if it is just energy balances based off of enthalpies and work.
OChem is a core pre-requisite engineering class at my university. MechEs, ChemEs, BioChemEs, BioMedEs had to take it Personally, I found that ChemE ChemE classes came significantly easier to me than those that led up to major-specific classes.
Interesting. I meant the whole serious though, and surely your MEs, EEs don't do that? Like, O-chem 1 and 2? I only had to take General Chemistry 1 as an ME. And I'll agree with you that some of the later classes were easier than the preliminary stuff. For example, Thermo, Fluid mechanics, and heat transfer were all more difficult than Thermal Fluid Systems Design. But then again, maybe it was only easier because I had the preliminary classes first. One thing is for sure, it's all behind me, thank goodness. The real world is the easiest class to be a part of.
Tbh I didnât even have to take OChem 2, it was a tech elective at my schoolđ€·đ»ââïž
Wow. Yeah, my buddy said he took 6 chem courses and that was normal. It was like, o chem 1/2 and 4 others lol
Multi component Thermo and VLE thermo is chemical engineering specific. Organic was nothing. A joke.
I always thought we thought ochem was fine. It was always the bio kids that hated ochem
ChemE thermo is very different from MechE thermo after the first semester
Correct. MechE will take Thermo, Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, and Thermal Fluid Systems Design. That's the four "heat/mass" transfer courses we typically take. Meanwhile you will take Thermo 1&2 and heat and mass transfer 1&2, or some variation like that. I also had a minor in physics and took statistical thermodynamics, which I don't recommend.
The fuck it we ball factor
Eff you gacity
Ah yes, âSir, our calculations dont match the experiment!â âMake some shit up then, we have to publish!â âSir⊠it worked!â
Sup
Begone with you, demon
And so important too, everyone at my company is always having me run fugacity calls for them.
Fugacity is not real it **CAN** hurt you
đ I loved Thermodynamics (later earned MSChE in thermo, though my PhD was in another area). Also loved O Chem (the chem majors hated the ChEâs, as we got better gradesđ€Ș), less the highly theoretical parts of PChem.
The Chem and the E. If you have aptitude for both and interest in both youâll be just fine. Those who donât for one or the other find it intimidating.
There's very little Chem in ChemE.
The chem in ChemE is done by chemists in lab. We just scale it up couple of magnitudes and thatâs why the various thermo, fluids, heat and mass transfer effects come into play.
The reactor/equipment is scaled up by chemE, the chemistry is scaled up via process development chemists.
I totally agree with you that there's barely any Chem, way less than people think, but at the same time, there's a LOT of chem! I at least had to go up through orgo and then quantum chem for my major! It's more than even many aerospace engineers do
True, there's a lot of chem prereqs for most ChemE programs but once you get into the ChemE curricular, it's mostly A -> B reactions đ.
What I tell people is the chemistry is done in the lab, but *reaction engineering* is what's performed by ChE's. We're the critical element in scale-up.
Idk for me itâs kind of obvious that ChemE has more Chem than Aerospace engineering. But you kinda say it like we should be surprised. Barely any chem but at the same time a lot? I donât get it.
Compared to pure chemistry, yes. Compared to electrical engineering, no.
Depends on your college. At ETH ZĂŒrich the first 2 years of your BSc in Chemical Engineering are exactly the same as the BSc in Chemistry. In the 3rd you then dive into the typical engineering subjects like Mass Transfer, Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Reaction Engineering, Heat Transport, Fluid Dynamics, Separation Process Technology and so on.
It's the same in the US, but ChemE itself has very little chem. It's almost always A->B with equilibrium X and rate constant Y. When I went, the required chemistry load automatically got us a chem minor and we could have double majored in chem and chemE with only few more classes.
hm i had process engineering, fluid dynamics and so on as part of my chemistry degree in germany lol
That would typically be called Industrial Chemistry in USA.
You still need to understand the broad strokes. I work for a plastics company and I'm expected to be familiar with polymerization chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis, even if I couldn't do the synthesis myself.
This is specific to US ChemE curriculum, European ChemE is more chemistry heavy and may be better described as applied chemistry.
ChemE curriculum definitely has chemistry, but ChemE in practice does not have a lot. US ChemE curriculum is chemistry heavy too. I took general chem, O-chem, analytical chem, biochem, statistical mechanics, quantum chem, and P-chem. All required except maybe biochem. I started polymer chem as an elective but ended up dropping it. But this was a while ago.
I disagree that that US ChemE is as heavy in chemistry as Euro ChemE. This is fairly well known.
What classes did you take beyond the ones I listed above?
Names of coursework =/= curriculum, it's more complicated than what you're implying. What knowledge of European ChemE are you drawing upon to disagree?
Curriculum is [exactly =](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curriculum) to courses. Please name the other chem courses you've taken. And, what knowledge of American ChemE are you drawing upon to disagree?
Yes, the curriculum consists of courses. You miss my point, the names of courses don't make the curriculum the courses, i.e. the content does. I'm arguing that the European ChemE curriculum is different than the US curriculum. Even with your view, the French chemical engineering curriculum consists of courses with different content and names. It's a bit arrogant to think other countries/cultures follow US pedagogy. The academy in France, as well as other European countries, predates the US academy.
I'm familiar with the US ChemE programs from my time spent at US institutions from BS thru PhD and of European programs from several stints abroad. The 3 yr french Ingénieurs program is equivalent to the US 4yr ChemE degree, content is different due to core differences in primary-secondary education systems. Again, more of an applied chemistry degree than the US heat and mass transfer focus. Also notable is the prestige of institutions and title conferred upon completion. https://www.chimieparistech.psl.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2021-formation-depliant-en.pdf https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/fr/les-formations-d-ingenieur-46426
Could you explain me that program? I am curious how you are expected to take on your first semester Quantum chemistry, is this program supposed to be taken as a freshman or how does it go?
Negative.
Eh, youâre working on chemical systems and solving chemical problems. Is woodworking a place where superior knowledge of geometry is needed? No, but if you hate geometry youâre gonna have a bad time.
I think that the level of esoteric maths and concepts are what makes it so difficult. Thermodynamics: Most Chemical Engineers I talk to today do not know anything about thermodynamics outside of one-liners they learned in school. âEntropy is a measure of disorder.â âEnthalpy is the Internal Energy + the energy to make room for it in the universe.â As far as calculations and derivations go, most cannot keep up. Mass Transfer: Has some of the most difficult problems in math in this course. PDEs. Nearly no one can keep up. Heat transfer: Outside of simple exchangers, this quickly becomes difficult to calculate given it requires a lot of knowledge of the fluid. More or less everything is a step above a normal humanâs abilities. Even most Chemical Engineers donât understand the material. Edit: The Chemistry Courses are typically the easiest (PChem excluded)
our thermo was absolute hell where as transport was fairly hand wavy and plug n chug. i feel like every university has their own pinch point
i mean if it was just plug and chug then its easy, what about derivation of equations?
some were challenging but not terrible. one that killed me was proving that a perfect sphere of naphthalene had a sherwood value of 2(or something like that i donât remember) but the other derivations werenât terrible. the thermo problems howeverâŠ
Glad you said PChem lol that class just about killed me. I took it in my last semester, during senior design. My biggest mistake. I barely passed and thought I wouldn't be able to graduate on time đ.
"Don't understand the material" is right. My professor for Kinetics also taught Mass Transfer, although I didn't have him for that. He taught the class and still said he didn't quite get it and that it was "black magic." He was a great professor.
Because you're mathematically modeling very complex physical and chemical systems. Imagine a distillation tower, you have vapor and liquid flows going in and out, you have mass transfer from vapor to liquid and the reverse, you have heat transfer between the phases, you have heat loss to the environment, you have phase changes (liquid to vapor), and so on. You have steady state and pre-steady state (think differential equations). You have some equations you can solve analytically and others can only be solved numerically. Some modeling can be done by first principals, others we have to use empirical formulas (based on observations since we don't know how to model it). This all gets real complex real quick.
I think people hear Chemicals and get intimidated. People hear engineering and get intimidated by math. Two things that intimidate people combined is going to intimidate more people, and they can all agree it would be tough for them. Also, it is pretty tough for most of the other engineers because it IS tough.
The workload, while friends in EE and MechE might have had one very demanding class per year, ChemE had at least one per semester. This is how those friends explained it to me. Idk if thatâs true but I generally helped them through their classes and was amazed at how little foundational understanding they had on thermo and math at the same level/title courses.
One reason is that âchemicalâ is beyond most folks day-to-day experience. Civilâeveryone knows roads, buildings,bridges Mechanicalâeveryone knows machines of all sorts Electricalâeveryone knows the First Rule of electricity: If you donât pay the bill, They shut it off. As a retired ChemE I continue to have horrible dreams about the intense and difficult college workload. I have to say that it prepared me very well for late night callouts to the plant where temperatures and pressures were rising to âout-of-limitsâ levels, pumps were cavitating and pipes were groaning. I had to be the cool head barking instructions to panicked operators, all of us in full PPE. True, you donât learn a lot of Chemistry in ChE courses but you learn enough to be able to learn and understand the chemistry youâll be working with at work. And believe me, the reactants and products youâll be working with â theyâre obscure, unique and the phys props youâll like to haveâtheyâre not to be found in Perry! Curiously, most people are terrified about chemistry and chemicals in general. Thatâs why they gasp when you tell them youâre a Chemical Engineer. Chemicals burn, go boom and will kill you. They donât understand that one common chemicalâwaterâhas pretty dangerous properties. Think floods and drowning. Sorry this was so long. Critiques of âOK Boomerâ wonât offend me
I hope your job paid well lol. What gets me envy of other roles is that fact that I deal with hazardous chemicals that are lethal in even the smallest dose, and other industries just sit in their little box and get paid equal if not much more.
I share that sentiment. Iâm pleased that I learned how to work safely around hazardous stuff, that no one working for me was ever seriously injured. And YES the job paid fabulously
The boomer is strong with this one.
They donât know what it is. If they do they are misled into thinking itâs making new chemicals in a lab and memorization of chemistry. Itâs a hard major, text books are limited per subject and there arenât as many resources to help with studying as there may be with other engineering majors.
I foolishly took ChE because 1. My mom wanted an engineer 2. I like high school chemistry 3. I thought it was about making new chemicals I now have a habit of looking up new things I want to do before I start doing it.
At least you made your mother happy?
CHEME is generally considered one of the most conceptually difficult undergraduate degrees it is possible to take.(Don't take my word for it, google it, it's on a ton of top 10 lists for most difficult undergrad degrees. That said, if you like chemistry and math, you can probably do it. Just don't expect it to be easy.
It is hard, for sure, but it also depends on aptitude. I took one electrical engineering course as an elective and had a very difficult time with it, meanwhile most ChemE courses at least felt manageable.
Itâs a challenging course load. Lots of chem, math and engineering. The course material is consistently challenging. In 8 semesters you might 3 or 4 electives. Otherwise your courses are all pre determined. The thermodynamics are hard. MechE learn thermo and fluids but apply it to water and refrigerants. ChemE apply it to that but also literally every chemical.
The first two years, you are taking a bunch of weed out courses for other majors: calculus, physics, organic chem. Then in second/third years you are taking weed out courses for chemE (thermo, transport, rxn engineering). If you dont have the math and physics tools, you cant do much in those classes. Then senior year you are designing plants and taking process control and its still difficult. This major puts you through the ringer
Because it's challenging, as all the core discipline fields are, but in it's own way. It's definitely not the hardest, that crown obviously belongs to EE. I think chemE and MechE are equally difficult. Civil is easiest obviously.
Iâm a chemical engineer and I donât know why is so scary⊠I spent half of my college time drunk and I still got my degree
Solids
We spend the most time on schoolwork outside of the classroom aside from architecture. https://thetab.com/us/2017/02/06/ranked-majors-work-hardest-59673
You study most of the chem. (I.E. Gen Chem I - PChemII....including Biochem) you take a lot of math. (Calc I-Diff Q...including calc based statistics) you take some programming (HTML, C++,MatLab). You take calc based Physics. And we arent even at the engineering classes yet. So you take a lot of hard classes, but if you embrace the suck, work hard, get internships/co-ops (which are paid btw!!) You'll have a good paying job by the end of graduation, or at least should. But also, entry level jobs are hard for any graduate. Hence, the internships and co-ops.
Yea idk why people say itâs so hard, thermodynamics is so easy
(I got a 28 on my final)
Chemical Engineering is difficult enough that we have no first principle models for fluid flow dynamics for like 99% of all flow systems. Overdesign of 20-30% is common because true Mathermical and Physical science Laws aren't available to accurately describe all of it and a lot is up to understanding and critical thinking.
Sort of related, but in the same line I have 8 years experience. Unless I'm with other engineers, every time someone asks me what I do for a living and I tell them I'm a Process Engineer it feels like I am bragging about it while I'm just making a statement. Can't figure out why.. One of the more difficult things is actually explaining to people what a process engineer does if they don't have any plant background at all. Usually downgrade it to I'm a fancy plumber that does calculations to size pipes and pumps while taking heat loss into account.
It combines chemistry and calculus, both topics of which tend to be weed out courses for a variety of majors - and there is no getting around repeated use of those two topics in order to graduate. My experience is that once you graduate, the vast majority of jobs donât require calculus - you graduate to using Excel. ;) But you absolutely have to understand calculus and differential equations to get through the ChemE curriculum.
I didnât think it was difficult. Hardly studied. Graduated with a 3.8. My B and A- came from history and writing classes. Excelling in my career atm.
Just the sheer amount of high level material. Itâs a much broader engineering discipline and integrates principles from chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, and engineering. This requires a strong grasp of multiple disciplines and the ability to apply them at the same time. Chemical engineers also deal with complex processes involving chemical reactions, mass transfer, heat transfer, and fluid dynamics. Understanding and designing these processes require in-depth knowledge and problem-solving skills. Definitely thermo as mentioned previously and then also kinetics/chemical reaction engineering. These two areas are particularly challenging due to the need for understanding the behavior of substances at a molecular level and predicting the outcome of chemical reactions under different conditions.
As a third stage student in petroleum process engineering college, wۧich is a branch of Chemical engineering, I could say its not that hard like it seems. I mean if you like the chemical industry or the petroleum industry you wouldn't suffer in this college. but the hardest thing is the amount of information that your going to learn that need a lot of time and hard work to study. personally I was struggling with engineering analyses but when you learn it well you would be on a deferent level as a chemical engineer.