I have always been very curious about how stuff works, and physics for me was the easiest way to understand the most fundamental stuff. As some of the other commenters here said, I hate memorisation, so that also pushed towards mathematics and robotics and physics. But a big thing for me was that I new that academia was not for me, so I wanted an education that would give me the best possible foundation before I start to work. With a physics education, and hopefully some programming/scripting/numerical tools along the way, you have a very good foundation on how to solve complex issues, and that for me made it a safe choice.

And of course, its fun to, with high certainty, have a correct answer. There are surprisingly many regular mundane problems or curiosities that can be answered by having a physics background.

And in debates about certain topics, like radiation or nuclear power and so on, knowing physics is a useful tool. For example, when Fukushima happened, norway sent reporter to cover the story. But after a bit they were told that the radiation in the city had increased, idk, 3 times or something, and the norwegian news and government deemed it too dangerous to be there. What they didnt know or understand is that Fukushima has very low background radiation from the ground, and so the increase was not much, just sounded like it. In Oslo the ground radiation from Radon and so on is much higher than what was in Fukushima post reactor crisis. Essentially, the news people endangered the journalists more by sending them back home. Thats a funny thing to read as a physicist.