What is the differences between physics and chemistry?

Nuclear Engineering vs. Nuclear Physics?

• Thanks in Advance! 1) What are the differences associated with each subject area: Nuclear Physics Nuclear Engineering (and if possible, Nuclear Chemistry). 2) What undergrad majors and grad majors should I focus on for those three subjects (like Physics for first one, Chemistry for third one, etc)? 3) What universities (plural) are good/the best for those three subjects (and not just MIT and Caltech) on the undergraduate and then the graduate level? 4) Which subject goes for Nuclear reactor developments, future transportation theorists, or weapons development? Thanks Again!

• Answer:

  Ok, I don't know what schools are good at this stuff. That's up to you to research. But I can tell you the difference between a nuclear engineer and a nuclear physicist, which will answer your 1 and 4 questions. A nuclear engineer designs and builds things that involve nuclear energy. Things like power stations and reactors for boats. They probably do stuff with weapons as well. And things like uranium enrichment. A nuclear physicist examines the forces that play a role in holding a nucleus together. At this point, the field of nuclear physics has become the field of particle or high energy physics, meaning that they have moved beyond nuclear forces into higher energy scales or smaller size scales. A nuclear physicist is not going to be interested in nuclear powerplants or weapons. That type of nuclear physics was discovered 70 years ago and is no longer of interest to any physicist. So if you want to do that, you want to be a nuclear engineer. These two careers are actually much more different than their titles would have you believe. The only reason they sound similar is because they both center around the nucleus of atoms. But one takes very simple nuclear concepts and applies them to real world devices. The other explores very complicated nuclear concepts that have no practical application to devises (at least not yet). As far as what you want to major in, you should major in nuclear engineering if you want to do that and major in physics if you want to do nuclear physics.