How Does Applied Physics Differ from Engineering?

[badri89]

Dear all,

I basically did my bachelors in electronics and communication engineering and currently working as embedded design engineer(2 yrs of experience). However I felt that I really wanted to do physics for my graduation. But I am confused between applied physics and pure physics. How does applied physics differ from engineering?If I go for masters in applied physics, what sort of jobs I may land into? Kindly guide me. Sorry if it sounded too novice. Thanks!

 

[thegreenlaser]

This is just my experience from being a summer student in an EE research group, but it seems like if you get into the right areas of EE (e.g. some areas related to electromagnetics) you're pretty much doing applied physics, you just call yourself an engineer and insist that H, not B should be called the "magnetic field." :P

 

[badri89]

explain more?

Thanks for the reply.. But could you explain what do you mean by areas in electromagnetics?

 

[thegreenlaser]

One example would be computational electromagnetics (stuff like how do you mathematically model physical systems and then solve Maxwell's equations efficiently in that context). That's just an example. I'm still an undergrad, so I can't really give much more than that unfortunately. My point is just that you should take a look at the EE research being done at schools you want to apply to, and you'll probably find some areas that could easily be labelled as "applied physics."