Q. What are the fundamental differences between a scientist and an engineer?
Possible answers are:
A1. A scientist has more freedom to follow his/her curiosity and still call himself/herself a scientist. An engineer must work on a problem that society perceives as a problem.
Another big difference is that engineering is all about cost. A few people ask how much does it cost to solve the Human Genome problem and the answer does not affect their opinion of the quality of the scientific result.
In contrast if it costs $100 billion to build a bridge across a river, almost everyone would agree that this is a case of bad engineering. It would be much better for society to drive around to the next bridge or to take a ferry boat across, rather than build such an expensive design.
A2. A scientist is someone who specializes with scientific information and makes use of it to solve some problems, such as how the sun originated, how there is day and night, what makes flight to fly, what makes a computer to communicate with one another etc. An Engineer is someone who uses to fix some damaged things, to plan how to build/create a machine and how to make an aeroplane, train, ships etc.
A3. Scientists propose theories whereas engineers use their theories to do something in the welfare of the generation.
A4. The focus of an engineer is the application of scientific insight to solve a real-world problem. The focus of the scientist is understanding the world (in theory) and writing journal articles and getting tenure (in practice). Fortunately, often these disciplines cross- fertilize each other. For example, I think it is not an exaggeration to say that a lot of recent progress in the understanding of stochastic partial differential equations has been driven by financial engineering.
A5. Scientist is someone who discovers new, unknown, theoretical things. However, engineers convert these things into useful things that benefits mankind. Something that a scientist discovers is useless to human beings if there’s no engineer that can convert this ’something’ into something of practical use. On the other hand, there will be nothing for engineers to build upon if there’s no scientist to discover things.
A6. A scientist seems to have a strange connection to the abstract and obscure nature of the universe, whereas an engineer has a direct connection to the practical nature of making things work for mankind. The scientist takes dreams and ideas and through experimental discoveries, correlates them with things in the real world, whereas engineers borrow these ideas and attempt to translate them into something practical that solve real world problems. The scientist is creative and original, the engineer innovative and knowledgeable.
A7. I feel science comes first then comes engineering. A scientist is the one who generates new ideas, so genius (genesis=generate), while engineer can mould those ideas in many fold for human benefits, so he is talented.
A8. Scientists are poets, Engineer’s are prosers.
A9. Scientists discover while Engineers invent.
A10. A scientist and an engineer work together. In a design for example, an engineer might want to determine the total loss on a cable span. He needs to know the resistivity of the cable material to calculate the loss. Material resistivities are researched by scientists. Scientists will determine the actual resistivity constant of a material through careful measurement in a controlled environment and with the use of specialized equipment. The scientist’s equipment on the other hand are designed and built by engineers. So it is a continuous exchange of knowledge from both of them for the benefit of who else, everyone.
A11. Scientist: He is the one who gives the scientific principles. Engineer : He is the one who makes use of the principles to implement/maintain or support systems which assist or are used by human beings.
Example:- Scientist: Every Action has an equal and opposite reaction. Engineer: I invented a Rocket using your principle.
A12. They say that the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. and both these occupations are interesting in their own sense, the scientist is about the why and engineer about the how of things.
Oh, it’s enough now!
