I’m currently in England to attend the annual meeting of the Editorial Board of New Journal of Physics. I flew in on Thursday morning, watched England scrape a win against Trinidad & Tobago with friends in a pub in London that afternoon and…

A few of us prefer, as a formal outfit, a jacket + skirt = (business) suit over tweed sports coat and slacks.

I believe physicsts don’t need any suits. Just a tweed sports coat and slacks.

It seems to me (based on the experiences of several female Physics friends and my own as well) that the converse you pondered upon hold true at a significantly lower rate.

In fact, if I want to get rid of a guy in a social situation I tell him that I teach Physics. (And I have it on good authority that I’m not by any means ugly, malodorous or in other way disagreeable.)

This is supported by reams of evidence, from Einstein to Schroedinger to Feynman, not to mention a pub conversation last night where someone I’d just met declared that she’d only date physicists and musicians.

What was the first thing I noticed about my husband when we met? His astrophysics degree.

I’m working on my own physics degree, despite the fact that I’m not sure if it works the other way around — oh well. But the reason I do it is not for the allure, it’s more for the power trip. No other intellectual pursuit in my life has brought me so low, or lifted me so high. I’m in it for the ultimate thrill of pursuit.

When you are referred to as a nuclear physicist or rocket scientist, it may not be a mere figure of speech.

The thrill of being on the brink of discovery is second only to being madly in love.

Physics is the greatest intellectual adventure mankind ever embarked upon.

Your expertise could could potentially make you a danger to national security…that’s sexy!

If you enter cosmology, you’ll have insanely excellent travel perks!

Physicists only need one or two suits.

You’ll learn most of the greek alphabet.

Books about unified theories make millions!

The problem I found is that a physics major equips you for one of two things: postgrad, or teaching high school. Certainly it is in many ways good intellectual training, but I couldn’t earn a living with my degree.

Really the #1 and as far as I can see only reason, in the current configuration of school/life, is because it’s fascinating.

1. (If you are trying to decide between majors) It is a lot easier to get the degree in physics now and move on to something else later than vice versa.

Maybe not inspiring, but its awful hard to go into graduate study in physics with a bachelor’s in, say, Economics. Its surprisingly easy to go the other way, and there are many success stories out there.

2. There are lots of people in the world who can read and write well (despite much conflicting evidence in the blogosphere). There are far fewer who can think clearly. The world needs more of the latter.

This is the underlying reason behind the often-quoted popularity of physicists with many employers. They just don’t put them in the PR department.

3. It builds character.

I could riff on this in any number of ways, but let’s just say you don’t really know what you can do until you try something that is challenging. And who knows, you might be good at it.

4. The party lifestyle.

Ok, this was our standard flip response in grad school to those who, at some anonymous mixer, would ask “why did you go into that?” Its only partly a joke. And it’s worth pointing out that as a simplifying assumption, physicist = wallflower is about as good as the spherical cow.

5. You will meet a wide range of incredibly smart and occasionally fascinating people.

Yes, moreso than in other disciplines. I have an elegant proof of that assertion, but I just dont have enough space to reproduce it here…

Of course, a couple of years later this young new professor showed up and started teaching something called “computer science” (this was Brown in 1965) and I did find myself considering and choosing an alternative. By then I’d realized that the world, including my class, contained both actual physicists — people who could do it as easily as breathing — and the rest of us.

… the future is in our hands …

(as physicists

- The bullshit detector that Dimitri mentioned. You get a feeling for how things should actually work, that is far from universally reliable, but far more than reasonably effective. Also, having seen theories in full bloom (classical mechanics, Maxwell’s theory, quantum) you have models of what “understanding” is that most others lack. As you wander beyond physics this becomes even more important. You’re less likely to have blinders on.

- Technical skill. There’s that old joke:
A physicist is not as good at electronics as an electrical engineer.
A physicist is not as good at programming as a computer scientist.
A physicist is not as good as machining as a mechanical engineer.
A physicist is not as good at math as a mathematician.
So why would anyone hire a physicist? Because he can do 90% of all of these, while their skill drops to practically nothing outside of their discipline.
I won’t be building medical equipment anytime soon, but I can sit at my bench and produce stopgap equipment to try out ideas on my biological systems.

- There will never again be such a thing as scary math. On the other hand, nonrigorous math won’t scare you. When the metal meets the road, you can do back of the envelope calculations and clean them up if things pan out.

- It’s breathtaking.

Now, I’m still in the sciences, and from my point of view, still doing physics. I’m just doing it on tuberculosis. Once you leave this realm, I don’t know what applies.