What is the difference between an engineer and a scientist?

[Joel G]

I'm in year 12,

I enjoy physics and chemistry & also maths

But I don't know whether to continue these as an engineer or a scientist.

What is the difference?

How did you engineers or scientists know which path to take?

Thank you!

[Sweet Tooth]

A scientist is quite a generic term and could cover all sorts of careers for example, you could be a scientist in genetics or astronomy.
I studied medical engineering and it was the best thing I did. When I was in year 12 I had no idea what an engineer would involve but I went for it being told that it was a mix between science and art (quite true). You will get involved in design at some stage and there will be a lot of mathematics involved.
Depending on your interests you could be a mechanical, chemical, electrical or aerospace engineer. You could end up being the brains behind space shuttles, missiles and aeroplanes if that's your interest, work with cars or prosthetic implants like I did. The possibilities with engineering are endless.

[nauzad]

That's a great question.

Scientists are people who largely deal with theory. They deal with pure maths or pure science and develop relations between observed phenomena and explain them through mathematics or logical interpretations.

Engineers use the theories developed by scientists and put them into practice. They actually do or make things in real life taking into account things like aesthetics, costs and practical limitations.

For example force is defined as mass X acceleration (which is a purely scientific / mathematical relationship). But in practice if you push a car with a given force, it wont accelerate to the value given by the above relationship. The actual acceleration would be lower (or higher) and would depend on things like slope of ground on which it is standing, wind speed, amount of air in the tyres etc. Although science can account for all of these, an engineer will use basic science, and compensate for these events.

Thus scientists work in sciences that use pure and absolute concepts (chemistry, physics, computers) while engineers work on applied sciences (mechanical, electrical etc.).