
Where does a tree get its mass? Richard Feynman explains. - chaosmachine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pIYI5JQLE
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drawkbox
I have seen this many times but it never gets old. I wish the Feynman style of
teaching and explaining our amazing world were more available. His physics
lectures are now available but kids would be extremely anxious to learn if
teachers made basic science as fun as Feynman did. He was smart to tune his
way of talking so his audience would understand no matter their level of
knowledge (i.e. "jiggly motion" describing heated atoms).

I am hoping that the internet and such things as OpenCourseware will allow
college professors, teachers and more to become stars of teaching because they
know how to communicate and make it fun.

These people should be compensated much more and be seen by many more people
such as MIT's Walter Lewin, Feynman and many many others hidden in the fold of
our current traditional education systems.

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sliverstorm
It's not just his style, but how animated and excited he gets when he's
talking about these things!

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dantheman
Agreed, Enthusiasm and Passion are contagious -- when someone cares deeply
about something it's hard not be interested.

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dkersten
When I was studying for my degree, my favourite course was "Digital Signal
Processing" and I'm pretty sure it was because the lecturer was genuinely
interested and enthusiastic about the subject. Enthusiasm is very contagious
and hard to resist. I think everyone in that course liked it and found it easy
to learn, just because we had a teacher who was really enthusiastic about what
he was teaching. If only everyone was like this...

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johnohara
One of my favorites:

Dick acted as a consultant for a company in Switzerland, which took him there
every summer. About 1982 or so, I had business in Europe, and I met Dick in
Geneva. We decided to kick around for several days. We did the shops and the
countryside on the first day, and on the second day, he asked what I'd like to
do. I said, "Well, if it isn't too much like a postman's holiday, I'd like to
go over to CERN," which is the European particle accellerator, where so much
particle physics is done, and where Dick used to work a number of years
before. He said, "Sure." So we went over there, and Dick couldn't find his way
around because the buildings had changed. We finally found our way in, and
looked into a room where there were some physicists doing work on the
blackboard. One of them spotted Feynman, and pretty soon there was a crowd
gathered, and the director came in. He decided they'd take us on a tour. We
went into a 007, James Bond cave underneath the ground, with all this
wonderful high-technology equipment. There was a giant machine that was going
to be rolled into the line of the particle accelerator. The machine was maybe
the size of a two-story building, on tracks, with lights and bulbs and dials
and scaffolds all around, with men climbing all over it.

Feynman said, "What experiment is this?"

The director said, "Why this is an experiment to test the change-change
something-or-other under such-and-such circumstances." But he stopped
suddenly, and he said, "I forgot! This is your theory of change-change, Dr.
Feynman! This is an experiment to demonstrate, if we can, your theory of
fifteen years ago, called so-and-so." He was a little embarrassed at having
forgotten it.

Feynman looked at this big machine, and he said, "How much does this cost?"
The man said, "Thirty-seven million dollars," or whatever it was.

And Feynman said, "You don't trust me?"

\-- excerpted from "No Ordinary Genius" by Christopher Sykes

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GuyC
Why?
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8&NR=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8&NR=1)

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dazzawazza
You can see better quality feynman here in the BBC archives:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/feynman/>

It maybe for brits only though... I'm sure there are ways around that.

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boredguy8
"I've got to stop somewhere, and leave you something to imagine <giggle>."

A humbling exhortation, if ever there was one.

I loved reading his lectures (as opposed to the classes I was in) because he
was interested in getting to the 'what's going on', not the 'here's the
equation to know.' One of his autobiographies talks about his frustration in
this area when he was talking about polarized light at a university outside
the US. They had spent all day talking about polarized light in the classroom,
but nobody could predict or explain what was going on when he took two
polarized filters and stacked & rotated them.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8>

That's a phenomenal video of him explaining how to ask questions. And does a
great job explaining that, "Why?" questions aren't very good questions,
without a context. And goes from there to 'everyday QED' with elegance and
grace.

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BobbyH
Feynman's explanation of where a tree gets its mass starts here:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pIYI5JQLE#t=2m12s>

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joubert
Without detracting from Feynman's genius, it is striking how simple physics is
in comparison to biology.

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SMrF
Biology is just a layer of abstraction on top of physics. It's turtles all the
way down...

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joubert
what do you mean?

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jleard
Turtles all the way down:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down>

Fields arranged by purity: <http://xkcd.com/435/>

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joubert
Where does evolution by natural selection fit into that xkcd:Purity sketch?

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vermontdevil
Wish these videos were captioned.

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mkramlich
Thankfully since we've captured parts of Feynman in the form of writing, audio
and video, even though he has died he will in all likelihood be teaching
people for centuries more into the future. How awesome is that.

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zackattack
The sound is too low for me to hear. Anyone know a cool trick to make things
louder? I'm using Leopard.

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kleevr
Uh, I wouldn't know about Leopard; but Ubuntu can apparently go to "11".
(<http://i.imgur.com/8E7Wx.jpg>)

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dnsworks
They go to tree church on Sunday, duh.

