
The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Principle of Least Action (1963) - tosh
http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_19.html
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phreeza
This principle plays a crucial role in the short story Story of your Life by
Ted Chiang. Sadly this did not make it into the movie Arrival, though I guess
this is somewhat understandable, would be tough to communicate this in a
Hollywood movie.

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Supermancho
Went from starting a car analogy to this, as part of the simple car analogy:

> Now the mean square of something that deviates around an average, as you
> know, is always greater than the square of the mean; so the kinetic energy
> integral...

No, I don't know, and you lost me. I don't think it matters to me anyway.

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heisenbit
You likely know that driving constant 60 is using less gas than driving 30
half and making it up with 90. While is not a square function it may be close
enough for a rough real life analog to help.

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happycube
Not just that, but there's (slightly) less effort involved in keeping the car
at 60.

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qubex
Fun example/illustration of the Principle Of Least Action in another realm:
when it snows, consider the tracks people leave in the snow as opposed to the
paths that lie beneath: they almost always represent trajectories of least
action.

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twiceaday
[https://reddit.com/r/DesirePath](https://reddit.com/r/DesirePath)

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muydeemer
One of my favourite principles. We used to refer to it as the law of general
laziness.

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mrcactu5
This shows the thrown ball (from Freshman physics) should follow a parabolic
arc rather than a straight line.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_action)

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makach
well.. that escalated quickly!

