chemistry major

[EWCTool]

I am a college student and am planning on majoring in chemistry. After College I would like to develop a career in metallurgy, but I am unsure if chemistry is the way to go. I do know that physics would apply to metallurgy as well, but my question is whether a chemistry degree could land me in position to take on any type of metallurgical occupation. I expect chemistry would apply to more of the extracting the metal as opposed to forming it, but I may be mistaken. If you have any experience in the field, your advice would be greatly appreciated.

[ThomasPowers]

Why not major in Materials Science with a Metallurgy minor (focus)? Unless you plan to go on to Grad School in Metallurgy/Materials Science, Chemistry is probably not the place to be.

NM Tech has a nice program and you can take explosives courses too---where chemisty might come in handy

And you can come play at my forge, I have several students come over on a regular basis.


You know you can change majors while in college. I did it EE to Geology; my daughter did it Enviromental Engineering to Biology, etc.

Thomas Powers

[Bentiron1946]

My wife started out as a chemistry major and then found out unless you are absolutely brilliant there is more drudgery than fun in it so she changed to pharmacy and found lots of boredom there until she got in the computer end of that business. One of my friends had his bachelors in chemistry and ended up doing thirty years as an Air Force officer, never has used it for anything. After the Air Force the only thing open to him was high school teaching and he wasn't about to do that so he became a long distance trucker. My son's chemistry teacher in high school never wanted to be a chemistry teacher but he said that he just wasn't in the top five percent of his class so that shut him out of the higher positions in research so with school teaching he could do what he loved to do and that was prospecting in the summer for precious metals and stones. That's what put him in the West, lots of rocks, big mountains and lots of public lands. He and I had good times talking metal. I helped him build his melting furnace for refining his gold finds. If you love metal go for it and quit dilly dallying around with chemistry, that is unless you want a double major. <_<

[ThomasPowers]

My sister was a chemist, she went into management when she caught hepatitus and couldn't work maround chemicals for a long wile. (eating shellfish on a caribean cruise). My college roomate was a chemist---he got into the computer aspects of it and works for a large drug company last I heard.