I am a first-year graduate student in Physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
Previously, I attended the University of Texas at Austin, graduating in December, 2001, with a B.S. Physics.
I worked for Dr. Karol Lang in the UT-High Energy Physics group on the MINOS project. MINOS is a vast international collaboration (like so much of high energy physics) set out to measure the mass of the (formerly believed to be massless) neutrino. Our primary contribution is to model, measure, understand, and test the 1700+ phototubes for the Far Detector.
Why Physics? Because it is the fundemental science, the center of the universe (although the mathematicians might also argue for that title). Only physics can answer the question Why We Are All Here, something the philosophers have been grappling with for thousands of years without any progress.
"Physicists cannot do...
"Given these facts, why the hell would anyone want to hire a physicist? The answer: Physicists can do 80% as well as the experts on all these tasks, whereas each of the experts' abilities goes quickly to zero once outside their disciplines. Even in my company, there are engineers of many types on many tasks, but the guys at the top are disproportionately physics PhDs. [Okay, there are a couple of engineers and maybe even a chemist.] Why? Because they are the ones who can comprehend the big picture and make sure that all the subdisciplines are exchanging the right information with each other."
- electrical engineering as well as electrical engineers.
- chemical engineering as well as chemical engineers.
- software engineering as well as software engineers.
- mechanical engineering as well as mechanical engineers.
- optical engineering as well as optical engineers.
- aeronautical engineering as well as aeronautical engineers.
- mathematics as well as mathematicians.
(Quote extracted from an article by Jeffrey Hunt of Boeing in the American Physical Society FIAP newsletter. Used without any permission, but I hope they won't mind.)