You may or may not want to pass this on to your DD, HK, but I have a PhD in Materials Science, and it's a great field for a polymath. Since all of the engineering disciplines use "stuff," you end up learning a little bit of most every kind of engineering - electrical, mechanical, chemical, even some civil engineering. At MIT, I took a materials science / archaeology class. I stumbled upon this because I had to declare an engineering major while I was a sophomore in high school (long story), and I picked the one that I could double with anything else in the department. It turned out to be so fun that I stuck with it. (Of course, now I don't do any engineering - I'm a patent lawyer. Which is another fun field for someone who knows a little bit about a lot of different things.) If she decides she's interested enough in it to want to talk to someone with a degree in the field, I'd be happy to talk to her.
