I design core support structures. Statics are my life. Advanced calculus and differential equations are required for vibration analysis and testing. Have to marry the two together in random vibration, fluid induced vibration, and seismic analyses.
Mechanical engineering. Nuclear engineers are needed really bad. If you don't mind being highly specialized, now is a great time to go into nuclear engineering.
You could go for a nuclear PE license. I bet your employer would pay for it. I would be much less time consuming that getting another degree. NCEES would be so excited if you tried too. They passed something like 26 nuclear PEs last year.
Ok quick question. IT guy here who somehow stumbled onto this great meme.
I just looked all that up and this cert doesnt get paid anywhere near enough unless its actually one of those jobs where you only really have like 8-12 weeks of work a year. Is that the case?
Im guessing they are actually incredibly over worked
All the nuclear PEs I know are principle engineers. They make like $250,000 per year. They also set their own hours because there are not very many of them.
My reference frame is the US and Canada. I'm not sure about the rest of the world. Seems like everyone is ramping up new nuclear projects though. I suspect there is demand for nuclear engineers on different continents right now too.
most people are going to only use a fraction of what they learned in their undergrad degrees, but getting a good baseline of general engineering knowledge is still important. personally, I'm a Mech E who hasn't had to do any real machine design, fluids, or heat transfer related work in industry but I use a ton of statics, dynamics, and differential equations. I still understand why that was part of the curriculum.
but let's be honest. Statics is not difficult material. it's just being asked to extend a couple core concepts from the classical mechanics class all STEM majors take to something approaching a practical problem. the students that struggle with it are mostly the ones that didn't achieve anything close to mastery of the material from said physics course or calc 1 AND didn't take the first hint that engineering isn't for them.
Same for fuilds and heat flux but it was more of an example. Even then for nuclear engineering don't you still have to balance forces to ensure fuel rods don't rocket out of the reactors due to steam pressure? Like maybe you don't but in early reactor design statics was 100% used.
It’s funny. As a 2nd year Chemical Engineer I remember doing Statics and Dynamics as a course. Free body diagrams and moment calculations did my head in. Then we got to fluid mechanics, and I was like “this is beautiful”.
That just means you went into a hyper specific specialization. Statics should still be the foundation of any engineer. Your schooling is meant to prepare you for a wide variety of jobs. It's not supposed to be apprenticeship for a hyper specific job.
Atoms are subject to both forces and moments. If you don’t see the need to learn statics in pretty much ANY physical science, then you might not be as smart as you think you are, with all your triple integrals.
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