Do you like to build things? Do you like to take things apart to see how they work? You could be a great engineer. If you study engineering at university, you’ll find a lot of the courses overlap with physics. But why is that? Physics is a science that tries to figure out the fundamental laws of the universe in a way that will allow you to make predictions. It tries to boil the universe down into some basic, mathematical laws. Engineering, on the other hand, is concerned with figuring out how to design, build, and use structures and machines. So how are those two things related?

Let’s say you’re building a complex suspension bridge. You need to build the bridge strong enough that it can take the weight of dozens of cars, but it also has to be able to handle wind, ice, rain, and whatever else nature might throw at it. How do you know it will do that? If you get it wrong, one unusually strong side draft and the whole thing could collapse.

The way to make sure the thing you’re building will work properly is to analyze it using the laws of physics. The laws of physics can tell you about forces, tension, harmonic vibrations and oscillations, tensile strength, elasticity, and all kinds of other concepts that you can use to make calculations about your bridge. Put simply, if you understand the laws of nature, then you can use that knowledge to predict what will happen to the things you build. Engineering involves applying physics in technical ways — applying it to technology.

Extract from Engineering Design & Technical Applications of Physics, by David Wood.