[simne]

It depends, on what you want to do. - Electronics is now huge, and have few extremely different parts, which could be all in one project.

As example, you mentioned 3d printers, they have digital part, power electronic part and some could have optic (vision) part.

To be honest, in University typical person learn few years, and become master in one part, and learn others by books or now by videos.

What I see from my experience, nearly all programmers absolutely don't understand chemistry, and it is really important for electronics, because you could damage expensive components with wrong chemistry.

Second thing, physics, probably astronomy good fit.

Electronics itself is not hard, if you know enough chemistry and physics, but without them, will be constant impostor syndrome.

[simne]

For example, once my buddy worked with large batch of mobiles, and he bought new Flux, claimed "not need to rinse off".

So he made manipulations, and try to turn on - 1,2,..,5,..9.. Well, whole batch not worked. Imagine, his feelings!

He asked professional, answer was: "you don't need to use chemical additives to rinse off, but you must use just clear water, then sure dry board". And it really helped.

[osigurdson]

Chemistry? I barely studied that at all.

[lmpdev]

That’s why it’s meant to be taught in highschool

You needn’t be an expert but you should be able to read the chemical terms and data in a data sheet and not make a dangerous or sufficiently risky choice on component selection

This is especially important for hardware applications in adverse environments

For example, knowing that you need to use a tinned copper alloy if your device is going to be used in marine environments rather than pure copper due to it reacting to chlorides dissolved in sea water

Or realising that you would generally avoid using batteries as the energy source for mission critical activities in polar areas as the chemical reactions for SLA or Lithium batteries are dramatically inhibited at sufficiently low temperatures

These aren’t hard intuitions to grasp and follow when designing a system, but you can find your design can go catastrophically wrong even a few units outside every component’s operating temperature or overall environment

Graphs and performance on datasheets are generally linear but the consequences of erring too close to the metaphorical sun may be anything but linear!

[osigurdson]

I took chemistry in high school as well as one course in university. I'm not saying it isn't useful but doesn't feature prominently in an EE curriculum. It is mostly math, physics and EE specific courses.

[simne]

Ok, how you will learn polymer capacitors without chemistry? Or for you normal to make broken tech, just because you don't know chemistry specifics?

[wrycoder]

You don’t need to know chemistry. Read the spec sheet for voltage and temperature limits. Observe voltage polarity, if necessary. If you need more general information on how to choose which type of capacitor, read The Art of Electronics.

[osigurdson]

i = c*dv/dt

That is what the EE knows, not necessarily how to make a capacitor from scratch. A lot of time was spent on leading up to understanding how semi-conductors work however. Including modern physics and requisite math, particle in a box, wave functions, etc.