I am going through an apprenticeship program to become a journeyman but I am also going to school to become an electrical engineer and I was wondering if this apprenticeship program will help me while I am getting my electrical engineering degree, should I consider it as job experience or is it a waste of time? And I would really like to know what is the difference between an electrician and an electrical engineer? Does anyone know of any electric company's that hire interns or have apprenticeships for aspiring electrical engineers?
An electrician is simply a tradesman specializing in electrical wiring of buildings and related equipment. Whereas an electrical engineer can deal with large-scale electrical systems such as power transmission and motor control, or they can work with small-scale electronic systems including computers and integrated circuits. I just think of it like this: Electricians work on house wiring. Electrical engineers wire up gadgets (big or small). Also you don't need to go to college to be an electrician if you can become an apprentice, but you have to get certified to be an engineer.
Great question and one many people have troube with. An electrician is someone who does electrical wiring based on wiring diagrams, electrical schematics, wire lists, etc. They are either licensed or unlicensed. They can wire electrical circuits as such, either residential or industrial. An electrical engineer would design the circuits, create the wiring diagrams, electrical schematics, etc. Basically, the engineer does the design and the electrician does the installation. The job experience would be good for you as an engineer because it will help you think how something needs to be wired, which will be a benefit to the person doing the actual wiring. It will help your designs to work as an electrician first. There are a lot of companies that hire interns or co-operative education students. Your guidance counselar at your college should be able to help, or the electrical engineering office should be able to help also.
In addition to what everyone else said here, electrical engineer's also design circuit boards, create code to run in Microcontrollers, design all of the test set hardware and software to test our circuits they design, design mangetics (transformers, inductors, etc.), build and test prototypes of elctronics.the list goes on and on. Just wanted to let you know that an electrical engineer's field of knowledge and applications to use it in is vast.
To get your journeymans card is never a waste of time. The experience and the Code knowledge you will use as an engineer believe me it comes in handy
They are two different things. Here is an example that might help. Just like a pilot and aircraft engineer. Both are very important and know information about the other. But one is hands on the aircraft and the other is more about the basic building of it. The engineer wouldn't try to fly the plane, learn about FAA procedures, talk to Air Traffic Controllers, learn all the communications networks, in route navigational beacons, airport runways and taxi procedures, preflight inspections of aircraft , and preflght take off or landing procedures, etc. The pilot wouldn't try to design the engines, aviation electronics, concentrate on aerodynamics of various forms or tensile strength of various metals for aircraft frames, thrust and stress ratios, Lightning strike safety design variations, etc. Hope that helps.
