For many people, engineering is an intimidating field. It’s understandable—engineering involves a lot of critical reasoning, problem solving, and thinking outside the box.
There are tons of disciplines within engineering, all with different concentrations. Most of it is complicated, but this is a sweet way of explaining and simplifying just some out of the many engineering majors.
Biomedical Engineering: Nerds Ropes
Biomedical engineering focuses on using engineering concepts to make improvements in the human body and medical technology and procedures.
DNA, which is an essential part of all living things, is widely examined in biomedical engineering. DNA strands also happen to look exactly like nerds ropes, if you twist and turn them the right way.
Chemical Engineering: Pop Rocks
Pop rocks seem like an obvious choice for chemical engineering. This tasty explosion is the release of gas (CO2) when the candy is dissolved with the saliva (H2O) in your mouth. You’ll need to know your chemical reactions as a chemical engineer, but you’ll also need to understand how these concepts can be applied to real life.
Civil Engineering: Lego Candy
Design and construction are the staples of civil engineering. Lego candy encourages you to play with your food and explore how to create turrets and towers. Besides buildings and bridges, civil engineering also has to do with roads, dams, tunnels, and other public structures.
Electrical Engineering: Sour Belts
Electrical engineering concentrates on circuits and electrical devices. In order for circuits to work, they must be completely closed. Sour belts can be shaped into loops that look like circuits, and they pack a punch that shocks you—just like electricity!
Industrial Engineering: Blow Pops
Industrial engineering sounds a lot more heavy duty than it actually is. You’re probably thinking gray factories, smoke stacks, and pipes. In fact, industrial engineering focuses on systems, processes, and improvement.
It is less technical than many other engineering majors, but also more management and business based. Like a blow pop that is part candy and part gum, industrial engineering is part engineering and part business.
Materials Science and Engineering: Ring Pops
The candy in ring pops are fashioned after gems—specifically, diamonds. The lattice structure of these beauties is one of the textbook examples that you find in materials science classes.
Materials science involves knowing properties of various different materials to see how things should be built, but also lots of chemistry as well, perhaps even more so than chemical engineers.
Mechanical Engineering: Pez Candy Dispensers
Does anyone actually like the chalky, bland Pez candy? We all know that the best part of Pez is the trendy dispenser with a fun character head that distributes each tiny candy brick.
Mechanical engineering, which is probably what you think of when you think of engineering, involves designing and developing machines and devices. Pez is actually right up the alley of a mechanical engineer. The candy must have the precise dimensions to fit in the dispenser, and the dispenser must have the correct springs, grooves, and shelf in order to properly dispense the candy.
Engineering and candy are kind of like opposites: people tend to hate engineering while studying it in school, but are thankful for the job prospects once they graduate. On the other hand, people love candy and chocolate while they are eating it, but regret the sugar crash that follows.