When I say I take physics A level, people's reactions tend to range from 'why?' to 'you poor thing!'. They probably assume physics = hard maths. Maths is often involved (and sometimes makes me want to disembowel myself with a spoon), but the physics department also get away with the most ridiculously fun stuff by claiming it's educational.
Exhibit A: Visits to theme parks. It was just the once, but still. We had a day out of school so that we could ride on roller-coasters and 'experience' the gravitational energy changing to kinetic energy for our coursework. The chemistry equivalent is dripping things into test tubes under exam conditions. No contest.
Exhibit B: The Particle Zoo.
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| Aww |
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| Ninja! |
Our physics department owns most of a full set of these plushies. They do have explanatory tags and are used as a teaching tool - but mainly they're incredibly awesome and cute. And the strange quarks have three eyes and the charm quarks have roses!
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| So much! |
In all seriousness, the actual physics is pretty awesome too, especially particle physics and astrophysics: the mindbogglingly small and the mindbogglingly big. I defy anyone to look at images of nebulae and tell me they're not beautiful. The sad thing is that although I have seen the Enterprise mentioned in an old textbook, that was to say that using antimatter-matter annihilations to power the ship probably wouldn't work...
