Hi Craig,
Seasons Greetings.
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Originally Posted by CraigS
… and took up undergraduate Science as an attempt to get out in the next year … a total of only 3 years .. unlike the slugging it out, and completing the full 4 years required for a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering (EE) ...   |
Plus with the added bonus of something like half the number of contact hours
compared to the BE, where they had time to spare to go out and enjoy life a little.
However, many would cross to computer science, in which case endless hours
in front of terminals doing assignments would ensure any spare time for
a normal social life would evaporate.
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Actually, very few people realise just how much mastery of applied, pure maths and physics is called for in undergraduate EE. Such immersion in the concepts embedded within these disciplines, certainly results in a higher familiarity with the concepts and workings of Astrophysics, than I think is commonly recognised.
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I thank you for your appreciation and insight.
It certainly is a real slog for most and I always tell prospective EE's that
is nearly all maths. You end up doing more maths than many maths majors
and even the non-pure math subjects are just more maths. For example,
electronics 1, 2 and 3 is all maths, systems and control is all maths,
communications 1 and 2 is all maths, circuit theory 1 and 2 is all maths
and so on. The UNSW Physics department always seemed to have it in for EE's
in my day and they would inflict particularly cruel ordeals on undergraduates,
such as the second year course on electomagnetism (i.e. fourteen weeks of
Maxwell's equations), where they seemed to delight in the fact that you would
only be formally taught the required maths by the math department in the following
session.
Certainly with regards astrophysics, you are absolutely right in that an EE
degree will give most sufficient familiarity with the concepts to be in a
good position to appreciate many of its workings should they pursue it.
If there is something an EE degree does for you, it
is probably training in arbitrary problem solving. There are more
direct connections as well. When it comes to the instrumentation in
observational astrophysics, it is therefore little surprise
that the teams usually include one or more engineers to design and build it.
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There is a direct analogy between classical mechanics and electrical behaviours, which emerges with crystal clarity, courtesy of the hard work involved in succeeding in the maths and physics EE subjects. The QM topic is fundamental in understanding the behaviours of semi-conductor physics which then becomes the basis for mastering electronics and digital logic design.
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Personally, I am always amused when I encounter a comment on the net
questioning whether quantum mechanics is really true. The reason is that whilst these
people are busy contemplating their navels, there are companies and individuals elsewhere in
the world amassing multi-billion dollar fortunes designing, building and selling
some classes of semiconductor devices that just would not work unless
quantum mechanics was true. As crass as it may sound to some, engineering also
has a solid appreciation of the merit of making a dollar and few things spur
the levels of research and innovation that goes into QM than the prospect that
there is a decent buck in it at the end.
One everyday example of a device that employs QM at its heart is the laser diode
found in every DVD player. The quantum well phenomena that makes the laser
diode possible happened to be first experimentally verified by an Australian whilst
he was working in the U.S. Later that same individual happened to be my previous boss.
Thanks again for your insight.
I reckon it is way cool and can't wait till it is used more widely I think it is a great invention. 
