You can find science in just about everything around you! Scientists study questions they have about the world around them, while engineers use their knowledge of science to make improvements to things. So there are very few things that scientists don’t study and what engineers can’t try to design.
There are many, many different types of scientists and engineers that study all sorts of different science and engineering topics. Those topics can generally be organized under one of three main Scientific Branchs – see the table below. Because engineers base their problem solving on life and physical science topics, you can imagine that there might be almost as many different fields of engineering as there are of science.
Scientific Branch | Description | Example Fields |
Life | Study of all living organisms and their life processes, on Earth and beyond. | Biology Medicine Ecology |
Physical | Study of nonliving things, their physical properties, and how they work, in the universe and beyond. | Physics Chemistry Astronomy Earth Sciences |
Social | Study of the social life of humans and how they relate to each other and the environment around them. You might argue that some fields of Social or Humanistic Sciences could be under the Life Sciences branch. | Psychology Social Sciences Anthropology Archaeology |