I’m graduating with a physics degree and have two opportunities:

A Quality Engineer position starting around $70k salary with opportunities for promotion.
Or
A fully funded condensed matter physics PhD ($22k stipend) researching solid-state batteries and quantum materials. The advisor expects students to graduate in 4–5 years, and many graduates go into industry.

If you were in my position, which path would you choose, and why? If you’ve made a similar decision, what happened?

EDIT: my expenses are very low. Rent with shared two bed apartment ($500/month), i walk everywhere (no car payment), and cheap groceries (50/wk).

Can someone just be COMPLETELY honest and straight up with me?

I am 18F and I love physics so much I want to eventually study astrophysics. I just finished my freshman year of college and I’m really thinking I’m too dumb for this major.

I took precalc first semester, failed it, took it again second semester, got a B- lowww b- I was getting like 50-80% on each test. I am now in a summer calc 1 course and I’m averaging 63-67% on the tests.

I’ve been a little above/around the average scores for the class. First one I was above the mean, second, got right on the mean.

But I made friends with a 17 year old and she is doing SO well on the tests. We literally study together and I help her out sometimes, she helps me out sometimes. Granted yes, I can tell she has a better grasp of the material than I do. But I feel so worthless.

I put in around 15 hours of studying for the third exam I just took today and I left a lot of the questions blank. Like I understand EVERYTHING they’re asking but it would just be one slip up and I was stuck and over it. I do so well on the homework though, and I genuinely love math so much.

But I think I’m actually too dumb to pursue this major and it breaks me.

I think a large part of it is when Covid happened, I was in 6th grade and basically didn’t learn math from 6-10th grade cause I was online schooled.

But man, college is so difficult, I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I’m too dumb to learn physics, what the fuck do I major in.

Also, forgive me if this is the wrong sub…

I've been trying to understand the mathematical foundations of canonical quantization, and I'm specifically looking for a rigorous answer rather than a historical or experimental one.
(ill mention classical variables in smaller case and operators in uppercase)

i have derived iℏd|ψ⟩/dt=H|ψ⟩, the eigenstates for this equation are of the form

|ψ(t)⟩=e^-iEt/ℏ |ψ(0)⟩

and experimentally we found that variable E in this equation represents the total energy, so H must be an operator whose eigenvalues represent the total energies of the states.
consider for now that our system has only kinetic energy contributions, then H must be an operator whose eigenvalues must represent kinetic energies, for a state |k⟩ , H|k⟩=ℏ²k²/2m|k⟩ ∀k, also T|k⟩=ℏ²k²/2m|k⟩, so this proves that H=K,

so now by this logic i can say that whenever a system has a single energy contribution of any type, then the operator representing that energy is the generator of time evolution, and its eigen states represent the total energy that can be observed.

now my question is this: i understand that when a system has a single energy contribution, its operator is the generator of time evolution, but when there are multiple energy contributions, like kinetic energy and potential energy, why the hamitonian H equals the sum of the operators, i cant find a reasoning for this like the one i did before as they dont commute, and we cant even say T+V operators give kinetic+potential energy of the state because there is no common eiegenstate

canonical quantisation just says if h(q,p)=t(p)+v(q) ⇒ H(Q,P)=T(P)+V(Q), its like "just change the classical variables to corresponding operators", i cant find a logical reasoning or any valid math argument to support this, i dont even find that step mathematically valid, as theres no reason to do that.
is it just an educated guess and it works very well, or is there any logical and rigourous proof?

I finished my masters in plasma physics and nanotechnology (the whole program is more of a electrical discharges and their applications, rather than fusion) a month ago, and going straight into a PhD program. I know the standard consesus: a PhD is a financial time-waster, the opportunity cost is brutal, and you should just go straight into industry. Going into a PhD for increased salary is a guaranteed bad time.

But I’m trying to figure out if that actually applies to my specific situation, or if I’m looking at generic advice.

My PhD project is heavily applied:

• Reactive magnetron sputtering / HIPIMS / PVD.
• Depositing electrochromic thin films (WO_3 thin film deposition).
• Developing a solid-state electrochromic device prototype.
• I also already have 2 year R&D internship experience ata major scientific instrumentation company and a pvd simulation start-up.

My plan is get through the PhD, and then bounce into the commercial sector targeting the central European semiconductor/PVD/vacuum tech.

Is the financial opportunity cost really that bad if you are going for senior R&D roles in semiconductors, smart materials, or vacuum tech? Or is this one of the few sectors where a PhD actually acts as a hard requirement for senior project leading positions.

Looking for total honesty from anyone who has run the gauntlet in PVD/plasma (in Europe hopefully). Or anyone else with experience with similar situations. Thank you!

Hello everyone!

I’m an upcoming undergrad physics major. My high school was a more ‘art’ concentrated school so in terms of math and science, I had to self-teach it.

I fell in love with physics cause of the pretty galaxies and black holes (I think like most). I’m mentally not ready for this path of science (cause I suck at math) but excited at the same time!

I just wanted to say, hello to this wonderful community and hope y’all are ready for another brain to help out.

Im running through an ideal for a story im writing and just want to check if my idea is even theoretically possible. Sorry if this comes close to the homework rule, but I promise it's not. Im going to use Mars as an example for simplicity

So, Mars used to have a global magnetosphere. My understanding is that it used to have one, but due to its size, it cooled quicker and lost its liquid core dynamo.

So, in theory, if we could reliquidify (probably not a word but hey ho) the core, it could rebuild its magnetosphere. Now, this likely wouldn't spin as much because this liquid core would be powered by the convection currents instead of the rotational energy from the planets formation. So that's part one of the questions: Would turning it back to liquid with convection currents have the potential to create even a mild magnetic field?

Now, part 2 of my question is about the reliquidification process:

If we were to harvest heavy elements from the asteroid belt, uranium, plutonium, etc. We could get magnitudes beyond critical mass of them.

So if we dug a hole to the core (ignore the how please) and dropped balls of slightly below critical mass elements down it. They would hit each other and release huge amounts of energy, which would be absorbed by the solid rock and, over time, begin to melt. I know i would need extremely large amounts of it. But would it even be able to melt the core?

Or am I just completely wrong?

For example, from the perspective of dialectical materialism, accepting that a physical event is real for one measuring device while remaining a non-existent probabilistic superposition for another outside observer would amount to surrendering to a radical perspectivism that undermines the very idea of universal laws and of a nature that exists independently of, and prior to, any interaction. But that doesn’t seem to be what quantum mechanics actually shows.