During elementary, middle and high school, I loved my math, science and social studies classes. My favorite subjects were math, biology, chemistry, philosophy and psychology. Because of this, I was not really sure what I wanted to major in college until my senior year of high school. After learning more about biomedical engineering, I realized I could apply concepts from all of my favorite subjects by majoring in engineering. But how exactly is biomedical engineering impacted by all of these different subjects? This really depends on what problem you are working on, and it is influenced by each subject in varying degrees. The following are examples of how I have seen each subject applied in biomedical engineering in my experiences.
Math
Math is extremely important to engineering. It helps us model how the world around us works and predict how the world around us will change. A model is how you represent something so you can better understand it. An example you are probably familiar with is model cars. When making a model, you choose specific qualities to represent and ignore the rest of the qualities. In a model car, the appearance and rolling wheels of a car are represented, but the toymakers ignore things like size, the car's engine, the steering wheel and sometimes headlights. Models help us keep things that matter to us while ignoring things that do not. This is why model cars help kids enjoy what they love about cars without having to worry about things like storing a full-sized car in a garage and pumping gas into the car. In engineering, models can help us make better decisions on how to design things so they are more likely to work in the way we want them to.
