How can the role of physics be improved?

Answer 1

If this is a marketing question, what is arguably the best way to improve the role of physics is to increase the public awareness of it many applications in daily life. We engineer the heck out of all kinds of things we use. Buildings, vehicles, electrical and electronic products and even the things we wear (which are manufactured using applied physics in a number of forms) are things to which physics has contributed in large part. We don't give much thought to the water supply, the effluent drains, the power grid and such - until they go on the fritz. We take for granted a number of things physics (in its cloak of engineering) has brought to us. Perhaps with more awareness and appreciation, we'll get more students of physics. We'll be able to "push the envelope" and create even more new and exciting things than the cell phones (with GPS) and laptops we take for granted. Or the society in Another Country will see these things and it will be them that takes the lead into the next evolution of advanced materials, higher tech devices (medical imaging products, nanobots) or higher quality lifestyles.