Christopher Sykes
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2021–2025
1:06:50 · 713K views · Aug 24, 2020
A restored HD upload of the 1983 BBC series Fun to Imagine, in which Richard Feynman talks informally about everyday science. Topics include jiggling atoms, fire, rubber bands, magnets, electricity, mirrors, seeing, big numbers and ways of thinking.
HN commenters point to it as an equation-free, charming way to hear Feynman explain physics to laypeople, including his famous refusal to explain magnetism with simple analogies.
7 comments from Hacker News
Richard Feynman is the best teacher we know (explaining electricity): this video He also explains seeing, heat, electro magnetism, elasticity and mirrors among other things. His academic lectures are just as good but too long and hard for laymen to follow. - Every time I switch on an electrical device I hear Feynman say 'Zzzzinggg' and I see the copper bars jiggling across town. - Every time I see a cup of hot liquid I hear Feynman say "jiggling atoms" - Watch his hands and fingers telling the more accurate science story, simulating the electrons and atoms. - I would say that this the most important video to see for any human being on the planet. De second most important thing would be half of Alan Kay's lectures [LINK] Great video's to watch with your kids! (from 3-4 years and older).
If you enjoy Feynman's lectures as much as I do (he taught freshman physics when I went to Caltech!) I highly recommend his armchair series, "Fun to Imagine": this video He's sitting at home in Pasadena, talking about stuff that comes to mind. • Jiggling atoms who like to make friends with each other. • Where do trees come from? (It's not the dirt.) • Why don't your arms sink through the armrests of your chair? • How do trains stay on the tracks? It's an hour of fun science, and especially accessible for anyone who is curious about physics but doesn't enjoy all the equations.
Somehow this reminds me of my old physics professor, who often had simplistic, almost boring explanations of things, like jiggling atoms making friends with each other, or how a train stays on the track. His name was Richard Feynman. this video (Highly recommended video.) I should also note that "teach me something" was intended to give the candidate a chance to be the expert at the beginning the interview. It wasn't something they would be judged on, it was an ice-breaker. And a fun one, based on the feedback I got from candidates.
In more general terms - not just applying to children but to anyone - I call these "Feynman lies": the kind of lies you have to tell so as not to drown the receiver into very deep technical details. In essence this means presenting a model of the world that is sort of fundamentally incorrect, but one that is useful in allowing one's to wrap their head around the ideas. "All models are wrong, but some are useful", yadda yadda. "meet where they are" is a really nice way to put it, although it can be tricky to not paint ourselves in a "like rubber bands" corner! > I can't explain [magnetic] attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example, if we’d said the magnets attract like as if they were connected by rubber bands, I would be cheating you. Because they're not connected by rubber bands, I shouldn’t be in trouble, you’d soon ask me about the nature of the bands… and secondly if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces, which are the very things that I'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain, so I have cheated very badly, you see. > [...] > But I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else that you're more familiar with, because I don’t understand them in terms of anything else that you are more familiar with. direct link: this video but the whole chapter is worth a watch: this video
My understanding of it is somewhat similar, although I'd argue that's where our mental imagery breaks down: the "weight on fabric" metaphor works to a point then stops conveying what's really happening and becomes misleading. I think of it like "magnets as rubber bands", and what I call "Feynman lies": > I can't explain [magnetic] attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example, if we’d said the magnets attract like as if they were connected by rubber bands, I would be cheating you. Because they're not connected by rubber bands, I shouldn’t be in trouble, you’d soon ask me about the nature of the bands… and secondly if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces, which are the very things that I'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain, so I have cheated very badly, you see. > [...] > But I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else that you're more familiar with, because I don’t understand them in terms of anything else that you are more familiar with. direct link: this video but the whole chapter is worth a watch: this video