Christopher Sykes
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 9 months, 2021–2026
7:35 · 360K views · Sep 4, 2018
A 1983 BBC interview in which Richard Feynman is asked how magnets work and explains why 'why' questions are hard to answer in everyday terms. He reflects on what counts as an explanation and the limits of analogy.
HN returns to it as a model of intellectual honesty and good explanation, often linking it in discussions of why-questions and science communication.
10 comments from Hacker News
I disagree! I think fields are very intuitive and it's everything else that's nonsensical! Magnetism isn't made of anything. It is a field, and it's one your can interact with directly. Compare that with, say, table salt. "What's table salt made of?" Uh. It's made of atoms entirely unrelated to salt, like sodium and chlorine. "What are atoms made of?" Uh. They're made of tiny electric particles zipping around at relativistic speeds but bound together by forces like magnetism. Richard Feynman does a better job than me of describing this exact problem in one of my favorite physics videos of all time: this video
i can't help but tack on my favorite Feynman video, on magnets: this video i'm just mesmerized by his answer, that without an understood context, it's not at all easy to explain how magnets work. his riff for 8 minutes on this is just a joy to watch.
I linked the "why do magnets do that?" interview elsewhere in the comments, but if anyone else missed it I highly recommend it: this video
> But the relationship between brain chemistry and consciousness is at best correlating certain conscious states with certain neurological states. How ironic that you would say that in a thread about Daniel Dennett's passing. You have obviously not read "Consciousness Explained." > And QFT explaining laws of nature would be strange considering QFT is included in the laws of nature. You should watch this: this video > there are philosophical arguments as to why there must be an ultimate, necessary explanation Yes, obviously. There are arguments for why the earth must be flat too. Why should I care about either? They're just wrong .
It's an easy mistake to make, to have incorrect pedagogy around the concept of temperature, and Feynman was fanatical about correct pedagogy. This is always good: this video