Do you work as an engineer and want to pick a hobby so that you can put in practice outside of work some of the math, natural and/or social science principles you have learned? Let’s take a look at some nice hobby ideas.

Cars

There are many possibilities related to these vehicles. What about getting involved in the maintenance of the car? What about some modifications to the headlights, or the suspensions?

Furthermore, you could make mobile homes out of vans. You may need to use thermal and/or sound insulation for the walls of the vehicle depending on what climate you want to visit.

Computer networking and servers

Setup your FTP, HTTP, storage servers. Then, offer your services to your friends. Maybe, you can host a game server and your friends might pay for the service.

Amateur rocketry

If you live in a country like USA, or some places in Europe, and some others, you can become part of Amateur Rocketry club. Some examples are: https://www.nar.org/, https://rocketry.byu.edu/. And the learning opportunities are plenty: propulsion, electronics, navigation, control, telemetry, among many others.

Sailing

A bit expensive, but if you have the money and you are near the sea, you can get a captain license of small boats and climb your way to bigger ships. Meanwhile, you may possibly learn lots about satellite communications, navigation with instruments and with the heavenly bodies, safety among others.

3D printing

There are many 3D-printer options to acquire, and putting the hype aside, you can learn lots about plastics, CAD, injection molding, rapid prototyping and other manufacturing concepts while you play with this.

Weather balloons

Send the weather balloons above the Armstrong limit, near space and you can record some nice photos. Surely, you will learn about cameras, GPS tracking, telemetry, flying permissions.

Amateur radio

The guys I know who practice this are totally hooked. They go to international competitions to see who can reach the farthest with radio signals. And that can be hundreds of kilometers or more. You will learn about signal processing, electronics, radio frequencies/spectrum, communications, physics, weather and many others.

Orienteering sport

Run around locations with a physical map (no GPS allowed), finds spots in the map, mark or photograph yourself there and complete a whole track. You will learn about mapping, increase concentration. This is just great.

Memory sports

The real deal memory palace, PAO systems, memorizing cards. This can help you improve your concentration and attention, even if the information being memorized in these competitions do not seem so useful. Anyways, it is quite a lot of fun.

Conclusion

There are many hobbies that engineers can pick up. Remember pick up something that will help you to relax. We cannot be working all the time.

Cheers!