Jusal on 16/8/2007 at 11:25

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I hate physics, but I lose every time I try to break their laws.

Anyway, I'd recommend electronics over physics.

Sulphur on 16/8/2007 at 17:19

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Well, frankly, it depends on what you like more and would not mind spending the rest of your lifetime doing.

Physics is a lot of theory depending on the field you plan to go into. Electronics should find you doing hard-core practical work coupled with the theory.

I've got a friend who's doing a Ph. D in Physics right now, and his chosen field is Quantum Entanglement. It's a ball talking to him about quarks and quantum tunnelling and string theory all in one conversation, but it really boils down to a lot of math and theory if you're taking a field like Quantum Mechanics. Which is all right, but practical applications, job-wise? Research (which means putting yourself in the right place to sustain it) and/or teaching.

But he also gets to goof off a lot. He's been invited to help out a university in Germany as they need a mathematician. But what he's actually going there for is the Oktoberfest. :D

He also wears five layers of clothing in summer, swigs absinthe, hasn't cut his hair in months, watches anime and plays online post-apocalyptic RPGs with a disturbing sense of humour. (The last two of which are completely me and my friend's fault. :ebil:)

Electronics, on the other hand - as you mentioned, a combination of Physics and Electronics opens up your horizons a bit. I don't know what a pure electronics degree would get you apart from the usual, but a combination? Hmm. Who knows, maybe NASA's JPL isn't that far off a goal for you; but remember, it's never going to be a walk in the park.

It really does come back to the first sentence in this post. Not that I'm anything of an expert, but just to get you to think more about such a decision before you make it.

Sulphur on 16/8/2007 at 20:32

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Er, that's not what I meant. I know lots of people who can't spell for peanuts or give a flying this-and-that for overly anal grammatical correctness. They are also able to elegantly pose an argument with simple math and candy floss.

I meant that maybe you have a deeper inclination for either of these two things and it'd be a better idea for you to veer off in the direction of the thing that interests you more.

I should've gotten that you've an equal liking for both from your first post, though.

I'll have to leave it at this: if you really do want to tangle with Physics - Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, and the like - bear in mind that it's mostly theoretical. I know something of the wide-eyed wonder that pure theory can inspire, like 'getting' the mass-energy relation of e=mc^2 and the consequences of something like that (Time dilation, Lorentz-Fitzgerald contractions, etc), but your future there is probably as a professor (even if you take astrophysics into account).

Electronics is of course a pretty diverse field, and as people have said, there's a lot of scope in it. That really does come down to that you can get a job out of it - as a random example, you could branch out into VLSI circuitry for processors, a fairly interesting field. Quantum mechanics happens to play a big role there - pretty much meaning you need to understand it to get to the concept of electron leakage and how that figures into the design and construction of modern-day microprocessors.

Electronics on the whole is pretty much actual application of theory. Which means you've a fair chance of using what you've learned, and as it seems you're more inclined to like both theory as well as application, electronics could be a rather valid choice.

But that's just an opinion. As is all of this post, so judge harshly wherever you disagree. It's your future you're looking out for.

My line of thinking is this: you want to choose what you want to spend your life doing, and people usually choose what they're naturally good at/have more of a natural aptitude for, which can sometimes be different from what they actually like more.

What I'd say is do whatever you find yourself better at - do you, for instance, find yourself better at unfolding various situations with wave and particle equations rather than, say, understanding and engineering electronic circuits? (like, oh, feeding binary values into a bunch of ICs and LEDs to output results of mathematical functions. I know, it's a terribly simple example, but insert anything suitably complex here instead.) Or is it the other way around?

Whichever one you answered yes to is probably the field you want to pursue. (And not just because it'd be less of a pain the ass to work through.) If you answered yes to both, though... then, with my limited knowledge, I'd point you at Electronics. :)

But really, you need advice from somebody who's already working in these fields. I could speak to my friend if you'd like... that's if you want to know more about the pros and cons from the Quantum Physics side of the equation.

Sulphur on 16/8/2007 at 21:22

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Couldn't really think of anything else off the top of my head except for a DC to AC Converter which would have been a terribly boring example. :D

EDIT: I don't remember because it's been a while... but I meant circuits that use ICs for their logic, not really designing them. Agreed there's a fair bit of low-level programming, either way, and I could be wrong with that example.

37637598 on 16/8/2007 at 21:49

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I would like to program too, but I would be interesten in the microscopic, and even smaller building blocks to designing IC's, and actually analyzing the behaviour of the particles and all that fun stuff. Basically I'd make the IC's, or design them, and my bitches in the programming department would finish em' off.