https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/m6dzhh/not_a_physics_question_per_se_but_i_just_wanted/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

I asked this in r/Physics and it was removed, re-posting here:

I love science and philosophy. Always have. I wanted to go into a scientific field when I was in secondary school (I think forensic science was my original choice) but, my insecurities about intelligence shot me down. I am now working towards being a game designer. I am fine with this, I want to create and write and code and draw and tell wonderful stories; there is obviously still that lingering regret but, I don't dislike my choice of creating games and telling stories.

However, a growing desire, it's always been there but I am not considering it more seriously, is a want to study science in my own time, specifically physics as I find that the most interesting out of the three broad sciences (physics, biology, chemistry).

Is this worth doing? Is this possible? How would I achieve this?

The obvious things I feel I should do are: watch YouTube videos, read books, and possibly watch online lectures/take free online courses. Would those things be viable, do you think?

I don't know anyone that studies in the field, so I've no-one to ask and talk to about it. I also still have that huge intellectual insecurity and do genuinely believe I am not all that smart, especially when it comes to high-level science and maths; I suck at maths and I don't think I'd be able to self-teach that. Either way, what do you think?

I'm wrapping up year two of a bachelor's in physics (astro concentration). I'm exhausted and completely disinterested in my studies. I feel hopelessly behind; I had to drop most of my courses this semester, and I was already behind going in. I'm nearly halfway through my degree, and I haven't had a single course I've enjoyed outside of a couple of electives.

I haven't been able to find a single other person in my major at my university, and I feel isolated. According to my school's public demographics information, there are other physics majors. I'm just completely cut off from them. I'm also apparently the only woman majoring in physics at my university.

The interest that got me to pick this major is completely gone- even things that used to be extremely exciting to me are uninteresting or even borderline upsetting. I can remember making up ridiculous problems and solving them for fun, and researching any little thing that interested me. I'd start my day reading papers way above my reading level for most of high school. Now I can barely make it through a paragraph, and I'm too anxious to re-join communities I used to be a part of. Engaging with communities that I used to love online usually just gets me death threats now anyway.

Going into science (especially physics) has been pretty much the only option given to me my whole life. I'm not sure anymore if my love of it was real, or just a way to cope with the pressure. I want to find a way to pick my enthusiasm back up and keep going, but I'm just so hopelessly behind. Even though I usually squeak by with alright grades, I feel like I haven't known what was going on in a math course since 10th grade. Even if I do somehow manage to catch up, none of the careers that could come of my degree interest me. "Go to school for as long as possible and then go into academia" has been my only option for as long as I can remember, but now the thought of it makes me sick. But I've looked everywhere I can, and there just doesn't seem to be any option other than academia or a minimum wage job with a physics degree.

This used to be my absolute favourite thing in the world. During especially low points, it was one of the only things that I stayed interested in. But now I'm completely burnt out and I don't think I'm going to be able to get back. I feel like I've lost my last interest and failed at my few remaining skills, and there's nothing left. I don't know what to do. I can't afford to switch majors, and nothing else interests me anyway. I don't have any family to fall back on or anything to be other than a student.

I'm struggling to understand the premise of the Bose-Einstein-condensate. As I understand, it's essentially a boson-gas and for very low temperatures the vast majority of the bosons go into the ground state. And apparently this is seen as a different phase because the chemical potential is non-continious when at the critical temperature when the body enters the bose-einstein-condensate state?

What I don't understand is, why is it so special that so many bosons are in the ground state? Why does the bose-einstein-condensate kick in after the critical temperature. What makes it change at that particular point? And how does a bose-einstein-condensate behave differently from other phases?

I apologize if this question is poorly phrased or not well thought out, I'm neither well-versed in this, nor am I exactly the sharpest tool in the toolbox.

I'm kind of just watching Quantum computer stuff, and I came across this little comic from a few years back. It's a neat little read, but I don't really understand its explanation of Superposition. Matter of fact, I haven't understood any explanation of superposition yet, unfortunately.

At some point, the mother in the comic says this: "Superposition doesn't mean "and". but it also doesn't mean "Or". It means a complex linear combination of a 0 state and a 1 state. You should think of it as a new ontological category: A way of combining things that doesn't really map onto any classical concept." And really, from there, the comic begins to completely lose me. right at the beginning :/

... I don't really know what any of this sentence is supposed to mean, ultimately. The idea she's expressing and the implications it's trying to convey are quite lost to me, and the same is true for me for much of the information presented after this point, and I feel like questions I came in with went unanswered.

For example, the kid didn't necessarily ask this, but in the comic he mentions something about a cat being able to be both dead and alive at the same time. I wondered to myself, bro -You can't be both dead and alive, you're either dead af or living and breathing, so how is that possible, if this is indeed not a contradiction? It feels to me a lot like saying I'm wet and dry, this gun is loaded and empty, "married-bachelor", Etc. The mother hints that this isn't necessarily the case... But it's very difficult for me to see how it isn't.