Ofey...

Did you know that Richard Feynman was an artist?  I don't mean his bongo drums – I mean drawing and painting.  Even though Feynman is one of my personal heroes, until this morning I had no idea he had this talent.

Unsurprisingly, nude women are frequent subjects – but also people that he knew (some of whom are famous themselves), and his relatives (especially his adopted daughter Michelle).  There's a collection of his art here; my favorite of the bunch is at right.

Ofey?  That's the pseudonym he signed his artwork with...

A Favorite Passage...

This is one of my favorite passages, from one of my favorite books – Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman:

Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference. I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.

So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.

I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate - two to one [Note: Feynman mis-remembers here---the factor of 2 is the other way]. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, “Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it's two to one?”

I don't remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.

I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, “Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it's two to one is ...” and I showed him the accelerations.

He says, “Feynman, that's pretty interesting, but what's the importance of it? Why are you doing it?”

“Hah!” I say. “There's no importance whatsoever. I'm just doing it for the fun of it.” His reaction didn't discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.

I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was “playing” - working, really - with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.

It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

Feynman Lectures...

Seven classic Feynman lectures, online...

Feynman Talks...

A nice collection of Richard Feynman talks...

Feynman on Curiousity...

Another beautiful video:

Feynman on Beauty...

One of my heroes, Richard Feynman, talking about beauty – in a monologue that is itself beautiful...

Richard Feynman...

Long-time readers will already know that Dr. Feynman is one of my personal heroes.  I recently ran across something I'd read years ago – his appendix to the Rogers Commission report on the Challenger disaster, containing personal observations.  It's a masterpiece in its entirety, but I'd completely forgotten the last sentence:

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

The man had a real talent for cutting through the clutter and crap that more ordinary thinkers get distracted by.  Awesome...

A Better Way Home...

A beautiful story about one of my personal heroes, Richard Feynman...

The Feynman Algorithm...

Here it is:

1. Write down the problem.
2. Think real hard.
3. Write down the solution. 

Har!

Much more here...