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hello and welcome to technically speaking where scientists and engineers come together to chat about a common interest share knowledge and satisfy some curiosity i'm antonia and in this episode i'm joined by rwayda and ellie to talk about science and engineering and what's the difference to start off with ellie what's your background with science so my background is i did undergraduate zoology so at school i did biology chemistry in english literature a levels and then i want went into
zoology at the university of reading which i loved and i would happily do my degree all over again if they would let me and it didn't cost a lot of money and then i moved on to a masters in wildlife documentary production where i really combined two things i really love the science and the zoology side all the animals and then also their creative side and a different sort of way of perspective of doing things in a much more visual way and much less sort of strict science rules and repeating
everything and doing it the right way first time which i was never very good at so yeah definitely combined my two loves of being creative and also the science and the animal biology that i find really fascinating it's great so from the other side of the debate as we call it razer what about you i'm a civil engineer so my background that i did my b in civil engineering and then i did an msc in civil engineering both in iraq then i came to the uk to do my phd and
began civil engineering but is more specific to fire safety and now i teach civil engineering to student here at aberte my passion to engineering started as a kid because i thought architect who are the people who are doing the building and then i found out that civil engineering really is the people who's doing the building architect basically designed the status of the building that's why i ended up doing civil engineering and i enjoy physics civil engineers quite linked to physics so i
love physics and that's how i ended up being a civil engineer great and just to round off i'll introduce myself as well i studied chemical engineering for masters and it also combined environmental and energy so i was really passionate about sustainability you know that kind of combines physics chemistry some sort of economics as well and now i also work with companies to assess their energy some of it requires behavioral change so it's marrying that sort of technical
information data side with working with people who actually sort of influence the planet yeah it's a really interesting field if we kick off this whole discussion with where do we think science differs from engineering if it is different because sometimes people almost think of them as interchangeable like at my university a lot of people in the chemical engineering department came from science and some people who have the title of engineer are actually doing a lot of
science research so what do you guys think i would say yes definitely they are different there's so many facets of what we would call science i think chemistry biology what i studied which was zoology ecology is very much science is completely different to what rowada does in civil engineering which is buildings and materials and fire safety which is to me not science in the same way that studying how an animal hunts or why they've adapted and evolution over time is much more of a
scientific process compared to something like building a material or working out where your fire exits need to be so i agree with ellie here i think is one of the engineering definition is an applied science so we take the science that is do fancy things and we deploy it to do building or to do design things because like fire exits need to be in a certain place to equip the human behavior and fire and the building needs to be designed in a certain way to do that we need a certain
material to build something but we need to understand the science behind the material to deploy it to our use timber steel and concrete all behave differently but we need a specific properties that suits the specific location cost so you need to understand why inbuilding gets to apply the science that the scientists came up with first so do you think in that case a scientist wouldn't have taken those factors into consideration for building a bridge yeah because i think the the main difference
is we add some safety factors as well let's say when you build a bridge you will say this material bear 10 kilonewton float if you build the bridge on tankley newton that won't account for two things the material uncertainty because the material might bear nine sometimes because of a defect that came with the timber or there is more law that was not expected so basically we will add 20 percent more of the load when we design and we will reduce the strength of the material that's how we
would deal as an engineer to make it safer to use i think a scientist would want it to be to the point precise and the same number that i gave them so if i'd say design this bridge for me for 10 kilonewton they will come up with a great design a perfect one for the 10 kilonewton do you agree ellie yes and no i do think if you told me to do it to 10 kilonewtons i would do it to denguelans but i do also think that science takes safety very seriously we've always been
taught i mean even in school you guys will know that we had lab specs lab coats gloves like you have to be safe just to do even basic experiments so there's no there's no doubt that science is equally as safe as engineering though maybe maybe you have this image if you want to build buildings that might fall on people i suppose i'm not saying if you bald balding it would fall on people i'm saying the way we would consider things would be a little bit different not
saying scientists would be unsafe i always say you were much more safer than us in the lab situation okay good i'll take that compliment i've done my fair share of lab work yeah we struggle to wear the gloves and so on to be in the lab the material we use are usually like something we will see at the normal house if you have a construction so you'll be like why do i need to wear all these in the lab i don't like this we'll have to wait yeah but we'll fuzz about it yeah i
think um one of my friends did microbiology and came over to my department to do some lab assistant work and moving over to the chemical engineering labs which we're still biological labs he he really shook his head at them that's the safety it's just like this is just not on you know as an engineer i definitely think we are a little bit more relaxed when it comes to precision at times and including lab safety maybe we are a little less precise um and that's where
you know science uh probably a bit more careful about things i take great pride in measuring milliliters to the exact exact amount on the scale that's my favorite to like if you need 160 it will be 160 mils beautifully done with the meniscus of course of course i was just thinking that ellie what do you think science does better apart from safety then if i'm being a controversial oh okay i think science is better at finding new things and finding the answers to questions
the new one i read today they found out that seals in the weddell sea are iron deficient because they give all their iron to their pups so they were looking at pup survival rates in the arctic and they found out that the mums give up all the iron and they're answering these questions but they didn't know that before it's about discovery it's about finding out new things and i think science does that better than engineering i kind of agree with you here but i think engineering apply what
we need out of science in a more efficient way it's fun to understand how things work but how would that help me do things better for humanity in terms of introducing new building new physics new generating mechanism to get more electricity i'm not saying is not good enough to know how animals be i'm not saying that i'm just saying we take the things that we would find useful employ it to design something that is more practical we have an interesting conversation here because
civil engineering is linked to physics we do some chemistries we will i think science is just much better at understanding fundamentals engineering is better when we cherry-pick what we want out of the fundamentals to employ them to do something i'm not sure what you would think antonio because you're kind of like halfway in between science and engineering yeah some people say you can almost make data tell any story you want and that's almost a trick in itself to be able to
do that and whether or not that's actually proper science um you know you require a bit of critical thinking about how you did it whether or not there was a bit of bias in what you were doing to get that story i think engineering does def i think we focus on what we're trying to solve if i take the seal i'm not sure how iron deficient seals are gonna help me solve i don't know nutrition but we wouldn't know if we didn't actually find that out i'm not going to
cross off science but we definitely do need an application i think that's maybe a style of an engineer an engineer wants to solve a problem of course they want to understand it too but most of the time we don't have the luxury even teaching civil engineers is kind of shifting to add more environmental to cover for the climate emergency and it's very important to understand what's happening with the climate now if you read the news few weeks back one of the airport in london the pavement kind of
molted because the temperature went up to 40. in the uk we don't design for 40.
basically we need to understand what's happening to the climate change now to change our criteria of design i'm originally from iraq i did my undergrad we designed for temperature up to 50 to 60 because in the summer the temperature goes very high and now climate is changing so we need to think what happened in that airport why the pavement is molted and we need to understand again the science behind it so we can employ it so they kind of like interchanged yeah we can tell you
that it's coming but we need you to fix it for us to make the pavement say it's kind of like everything is talking to each other with the temperature raising in the uk the housing is becoming problem because it's designed to trap the heat in yes very much so didn't everyone feel that and i heard both heat and cold will go extreme in the uk we will get cooler winters and warmer summers and we need to figure out a way to manage all the application that we do but we can't do
that without the scientists because they need to tell us what they expect what range of temperature i'm expecting and we're talking about we're trying to limit the average global temperature going above 1.5 degrees c compared to pre-industrial times but that 1.5 degrees c isn't very much on a sense of how we can feel it i've seen these beautiful meteorological maps about how that temperature gradient actually applies across the globe that it's not just 1.5 everywhere but in the deserts
it's even more extreme and then there'll be patches where there's more or less rainfall because of that and so yeah it definitely affects what we're trying to design and also our understanding of what climate is i think that's where the science comes in you need these meteorologists these climate scientists to make their predictions to make their models so that you've got something to work from if we didn't do all the hard work in the first place you wouldn't know how to you know
make your materials withstand 40 degree temperatures or how to help heathrow airport to not have a melting runway so i think it's very much about working together as well we need the we need the science to inform the practical applications that the engineers can then help us solve the real world problems what i would imagine between science and engineering they're more like complementary than each one do its own thing because they're interchanged without scientists that want to go and know
things we would not have the data to employ to design things i don't think it's one way or the other i think we just need to talk to each other more now be willing to work together and share lots of different ideas and i think that's the the new trend now in academia they're promoting multi-disciplinary interest to bring more to the table yeah absolutely it definitely depends on background i think you find it a lot of universities as well that people will start doing one subject as their
undergrad and then maybe get half a year through and realize it's not quite what they were after and you can switch i think people maybe don't realize that either is that there is a lot of interchangeable skills that you'll learn and you can make it transfer to a slightly different specialism or a more niche subject yeah on the same topic i know three people in the uk who are now highly achieving academic in civil engineering who start wanting to be in physics and after their first year of
physics they decided oh civil engineering seemed to suit me all transferred to civil engineering we are human we change with time i don't think my 18 year old self is thinking exactly as my current age i completely agree i think the more you learn the more you want to know as well you might think oh well that module was really rubbish i'm not interested in microbiology at all but the other module that i had on this that and the other was much more up my street and i'll take
more more things related to that so yeah it just changes the more you learn the more you want to learn about different subjects do you think we're taught differently as scientists and engineers like do you think our degrees are actually different considering you know if someone could do physics and then go into civil engineering could an engineer go into a science job that's such an interesting question i feel like maybe yes i think there's a slight difference that the scientists would be
trying to explore an engineer is mostly we're trying to train engineers to solve not necessarily math problem so if you have a collapse of the material near a railway you need a solution fast to clear it so we would teach them problem solving skills we don't have to know why the collapse happened we need a scientist to see why that collapse happens i think scientists are more trained to explore yeah i think we're more trained to ask questions like why on a fundamental level has this happened
what's inside the cell that's causing these changes all that sort of thing but i'm not necessarily trying to solve a practical problem i'm just exploring it for the joy of it and to discover why it's happening and i think a person depending on how they feel about things they can change their careers i think antonia you're a great example of this yeah in a way my degree chemical engineering that is almost a vocation in itself you know and you get taught the basics of
engineering you know you apply it quite specifically to chemical plants but it does also give you those transferable skills too so any mass production of an item or or a system i spent a lot of time like when i was job hunting almost trying to convince people like i have all these skills i know a logical framework to apply whatever problem you want me to solve it's funny because yeah i didn't exactly go into a direct chemical engineer job it's funny how how
you do one thing and it just turns into another yeah i think one of our members her background was civil engineering and she do more social science now there's also writing as well in science communication like there's so much more than just doing the job that you have the degree in there's a big wide world out there and lots of people now don't stick to the same job that they've always done do you think that's for the better you know that we have almost a diversity of
experiences rather than you know almost training for one job and staying in that one job i think you ellie you didn't you didn't go through that path i didn't really go through that path but raiders kind of stuck to the path it's always been civil engineering buildings i know fire safety also a bit of a different thing what do you think not even the degrees are changing so now there's a big trend in civil engineering degree so we're doing civil and environmental engineering
degrees instead we teach the student a lot about the environmental so they can be environmental engineering when they graduate they don't have to be civil engineer it's becoming more the trend now to train people to use different other skills so they can change their path one of our broadcast members she she's doing water engineering which is also a discipline of civil engineering she told me she hates structure she just don't like them not everyone could love them reminder
which is totally fine that's not fun now like in civilization you can go and do that as well i think all the disciplines are like that today there's not one way to do it yeah no absolutely not and i would encourage everyone going to uni to get as much actual real world work experience as you can and you'll see what you need when you do jobs and you'll talk to people in those companies and everyone will have a different background not everyone working at a civil engineering company
will be a civil engineer graduate and that sort of thing and especially my job which is very diverse like everyone's got different science backgrounds but it's the love of the discovery and the love of the writing and the social content which is why people are there and not necessarily because they studied biological sciences or genetics or any of those subjects people get into different jobs in different ways and have very varied career paths i also want to add that university isn't the
only journey into science and engineering i mean on one aspect you know you learn stuff academically and so you have that really good grounding but you know maybe if book learning isn't exactly your style you know apprenticeships hnc's are also a way to get into those related jobs beyond university when you start looking as a professional becoming chartered that can have implications on what education you had because it is about what is your fundamental understanding of engineering so if
you're looking for those kind of accreditations then that's when you know looking at what course you take would be really important but if you know that you just enjoy it there is still a way it's just it might not be the direct path yeah lots of my zoology graduates didn't get into veterinary that they wanted to be vets and they didn't get in the first round because it's very competitive but doing a zoology degree means that you can transfer into veterinary and start in
second year i'm not sure the ins and outs of it but lots of them decided that they would do the zoology first and then because you have those skills you've effectively sort of started ahead of the incoming uh veterinary students ahead so you can use what you study to transfer into other things there's always different routes into different things that you want to learn or different courses or different jobs at the end of it so it's worth exploring there's not one set way to do anything
yeah we have one of the students in our first year she's a very bright student and she started with physics then transferred to civil engineering and she decided to do year one instead of year two and she's very ahead than the other student in year one looking back before you went to uni if you had the knowledge that you have now what advice would you give to yourself don't sweat the chemistry exam so much this is not advice to anyone but i got terrible a level results i shouldn't
have got into uni but they led me in on the strength of my personal statement and my other extracurricular activities and all of that sort of things so don't worry so much is what i would have told myself if i knew before i did my chemistry a level that i would have got into reading i that would have been such a huge relief but obviously you don't know that and exams are stressful and i'm not telling anyone to not revise and not work hard but just know that it is not so rare
that you might not get in if you don't get those three a's or whatever that is that you need well it's all numbers now isn't it yeah i actually didn't get in on the day i was supposed to get three a's and uh i was just below i got an a and two b's and i didn't have any offers for a and two b's but there was a foundation course for chemical engineering at university of manchester so i was able to still do the course i wanted to do because i knew i didn't want to change
course just because of my grades so i just spent an extra year learning and that was actually really good i kind of actually got better at maths and then ended up not using it but still i got better at maths but that wasn't my struggle it was actually um the physics and chemistry which i also don't really use that much anymore so i don't know if that that is advice for myself it was really bad for me at the time i thought oh this is the end of the world it's the worst thing ever and then
realizing oh no it's just an extra year and actually that doesn't matter like you know i know like some some university courses are three years and then you're out into the real world but then i got the perspective that in other countries they don't go through university that quickly and really it's not about how fast until you graduate it's you know about actually being prepared and happy what about you raider as a kid i wanted to be an architect though i did a huge
family porsche because in middle east the cultures push you you need to be either a doctor mainly a doctor any type of doctor or a partner like that's the main thing you want to do so i was i wanted to be it i don't yet i did not score high enough i scored 91 and that was not enough out of 100.
that was not enough for dentistry there for that specific year so that's why i ended up with engineering so i read a little bit on engineering because the university i got accepted and did not have an architect department and i found out then that basically what i want to do is civil engineering and it actually did not turn out that that bad for me i i cried a lot on the day when the scores were announced i cried for a full i think for a day or a week or something i just cried and
cried and cried and cried yet looking back now i just should have taken what i got with pride i'm doing well now um that's why i'm here well i've definitely been that person crying on results today like it's it is really difficult and at the time it does feel like the end of the world but it is not you have to know that in perspective five years later ten years later life changes and you will definitely find a way to get into the thing that you want to do you know there is persistence and you
can always reapply you can take a year out you can defer like there's so many options and different ways to do a foundation year like attorney like there's always there's always a route in if you if you look hard enough yeah if we go back to the headline topic science versus engineering we've kind of got science science no engineering is more fun oh you get to build things i don't know it was the colorful chemistry that got me into having chemical engineering and then i did none
of that it was science that got me interested into engineering i'm not saying science is a terrible thing that's great we need the scientists they're essential yeah absolutely i think it's about collaboration and i would also strongly suggest that anyone thinking of doing science or engineering gets hold of a lot of unique prospectuses and you can see what modules different courses offer what you new different uni specialize in and you can just see what tickles your fancy and what
makes a difference to you and also university open days are such good uh starters and you'll get a real feel not just for the course but where you'll be living what sort of people are going to be there with you how big your classes will be all of that sort of thing so it's really about the university experience is much more than just your degree though that should be the focus and not going out honest this sounds like a good place to leave it i think we've covered a lot about you
know different aspects of science and engineering where there's crossovers where's there's differences and you know also if you're looking at studying science or engineering both are great we highly recommend them but also it depends on what you think you want and what you want to do and of course your interest may change and it is okay to change course or change job or change career people have done it and they're all happy as far as i know it's about finding out what you can before you make
those decisions if you enjoyed this episode or want to continue the conversation you can find us on twitter and instagram or leave a comment on the episode thanks so much for listening the views expressed in this podcast belong entirely to the person that said them they do not represent any industry or organization if you enjoyed listening to these views it would really help us out if you could rate us leave a review and tell a friend this podcast was sponsored by no one but if you're
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