What makes electrical engineering such an attractive field of study?

Electrical engineering encompasses not only electricity, but also communications, control, semiconductors, electronics, electrophysics, and many other fields, so prerequisite courses are essential. This is because it can be applied to many aspects of modern society.

 

Among the various majors at universities, many people think that ‘electrical engineering’ is vaguely about electricity. While this is certainly not the case, electrical engineering is much broader than most people realize, and the department of electrical engineering at my university is technically an electrical and electronics engineering department. What was the College of Electrical and Electronic Engineering a few years ago was recently changed to the College of Electrical Engineering, but the content of the major has not changed, so when I talk about the major, I will talk about the College of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
The literal translation of ‘electrical engineering’ means engineering using electricity. The first thing I want to point out is the word ‘engineering’. There aren’t many majors that have the name “engineering” attached to them, and they’re usually found in engineering schools. It’s a bit different from other majors, because while science is all about exploring the laws of nature, engineering is about using science to produce something artificially. You can think of it in a similar vein to applied science. The character “engineering” is the “工” character in the word “factory,” and in a very simple way, it is the study of learning the art of producing something in a factory. In the case of electrical engineering, that something is anything that utilizes electricity. Electrical engineering is not only about making home appliances, but also about the production and utilization of electricity itself.
After a brief description of the department itself, let’s get into the details. Within electrical engineering, there are generally five main areas of study. As an electrical engineering student, you’ll choose one of these areas to study. One of the biggest differences from a typical liberal arts college is the absolute necessity of prerequisite courses. If you don’t do the previous course and utilize the skills you’ve learned in the next course, you’ll have a harder time or won’t be able to take the class at all. This is why there are five different paths, each with a prerequisite course, followed by a series of upper-level courses. These are called tracks within the electrical engineering department.
The first of the five paths is called Electrical Energy. This is literally the branch where you learn about electrical energy. It studies the generation of electricity, the transportation of electricity, and the development of new alternative energy sources.
The second is telecommunications. Telecommunications is the study of all signals and radio waves. You’ll learn about cell phone waves, sound waves, and networks in computer communications.
The third is control. Control may sound complicated, but in simple terms, it’s the ability to control something, such as a robot or artificial intelligence. In fact, in this field, robots are built to perform various activities.
The fourth field is semiconductor. Semiconductors is a field that Korea is already known for because it has world-class technology. It is used to make precise machines by putting various functions on small chips.
The fifth field is electrophysics. This is a field where the word engineering is a bit weak. It’s a discipline that studies electrophysics in the same way as the pure sciences of physics. It’s a field that studies modern physics, such as quantum, organic, and elementary physics.
In addition to these five, there is one more field that is a bit different. This is the field of computers. This discipline is also found in electrical engineering because programming skills are necessary to use different machines or products that are made up of electrical technology. For example, in the field of control, in order to control a robot, you don”t just send it electricity, you need a program to control it and give it commands. You learn programming for that.
Then there is the field of biomedical engineering. In simple terms, it’s the study of all medical devices that are used to treat people. For example, X-rays can be included in the category of electrical engineering because they are a type of radio waves, and MRI machines require electrical engineering skills. If an electrical engineering student studies biomedical engineering, he or she may go to the Yeongan campus, which has a medical school, rather than the Gwanak campus of Seoul National University.
At the beginning of this article, we mentioned that ‘Electrical Engineering’ is a very comprehensive discipline. As such, electrical engineering has applications in many different fields of study. In fact, in the modern world, electricity is ubiquitous in our lives, so it’s not surprising that it can be connected to anything. Graduates of electrical engineering majors have gone on to work in many unexpected fields. Despite the challenges of studying, electrical engineering is definitely a fascinating field.