r/ChemicalEngineering • u/Plane-Temporary-8501 • Jul 19 '25

Career Advice How much Maths is in ChemEng?

Hii, im a year 12 student who is currently thinking about what course i should do. And im stuck between Maths and ChemEng. I only recently discovered a Maths course is just mainly proofs which isnt exactly what i was looking for. I absolutely love Maths and i really want to continue it in the future and I think the maths in engineering is my best bet as it is applied. But the thing is, i dont do physics so the engineering courses i could do are very limited. So i can really only apply for ChemEng.

My main question is “Is chemical engineering majority maths and roughly what percentage of the course is just maths?”

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u/vovach99 Jul 19 '25

ChemEng contains huge amount of physics, so you won't escape from physics if you choose chemistry :)

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u/RopeTheFreeze Jul 19 '25

Huh, I was under the impression it was mostly math and chemistry. Like mixing, diffusion, fluids, thermo, etc. where does the physics come in? Or are we counting fluid/thermo stuff as physics?

I'm great at any physics where my letters don't have hats on them!

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u/claireauriga ChemEng Jul 19 '25

My take as an engineer more than ten years out of uni:

For university, the bit of physics you need is forces and vectors, particularly for fluid dynamics. If you've done a mechanics module in maths you've already covered the exact same thing and will be well-prepared.

In industry, physics has been useful for me in terms of basic understanding of analytical techniques like spectroscopy and diffraction.