I do enjoy some aspects of science...mostly from the 10,000 foot level and the fun details. I struggle with the weeds of such as organic chemistry, and don't ask me to do any more frog dissections!

" I also am fond of facts and I disdain pseudoscience and quackery. "

X 1000

I came upon a treat for science lovers and those who would ike to be inspired.

Years ago, 1988!, PBS’s NOVA presented one of our all time favorite scientists — Richard Feynman, in a broadcast of

FEYNMAN: THE PLEASURE OF FINDING THINGS OUT (1981)

❗️➡️ https://vimeo.com/340695809

(I can’t get the video to link, even though Houzz lets us link Vimeo. Perhaps because it is long or maybe Hz doesn’t YET love science)

If you first want a bit of a sketch of Feynman, you can look at wikipedia, or read this about his book. In addition to being a fantastic physicist and Nobel Laureate, he had a great sense of humor and was quite a character.

➡️ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pleasure_of_Finding_Things_Out

I am an admirer of science and feel indebted to those who do LOVE it and study it and work at it and do all the things that involve science that I am not interested in doing/reading/knowing. I find some things fascinating about science - my grandson loves it and is always finding youtube videos about things that I never would have thought to look up and I love watching with him. I've learned more about so many things in the 15 years of his life than I did for many other times in my life.

Back to your post about history, I am truly fascinated by the advances in science, technology, physics, etc made by ancient people. I find my self wondering about so many things, like who thought to try that, or why/how was that discovered. That wonder carries into more modern times, too. So many things that I wonder: how did someone think of that or stumbled into that or understood that. It's all fascinating!

Treat yourself to this, the late, great Richard Feynman.

FEYNMAN: THE PLEASURE OF FINDING THINGS OUT (1981)

➡️ https://vimeo.com/340695809

You like cooking, seashells, gardening, rainbows, that after a rainstorm fragrance? That’s science.

I just read about this yesterday. It’s where they implant a tooth into an eye to restore vision to the blind.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/tooth-in-eye-surgery-canada-1.7470626

”It involves removing a patient's tooth, usually the canine, installing a plastic optical lens inside it, and then implanting the whole thing into the eye. ”

@roxsolid omg, I'm going to faint....

Eye know, right? 🤠

Yes, I especially love astronomy and miss my old winter camping days. Too much light pollution here (and we've had a cloudy period). March is often clear and I'm hoping to watch the waxing moon, fingers crossed

I'm contemplating a trip to the desert in April to enjoy some gorgeous starry nights.

Whoa. Aren't canines sometimes called the "eye teeth"?

lat62, last night there was a seven planet lineup.

My husband loves star gazing, and I love looking at the night sky. We have two chairs set up in a pasture, far from the house where we often spend the middle of the night.

eta we often see the northern lights.

Lat62, I wish you some clear nights. Where I grew up there were few people around and hardly any lights at night. The stars seemed so close.

Another time, camping in Oklahoma decades ago was fantastically dark on a clear starry night with a pond nearby.

A friend has an enormous telescope inhis front yard an takes photos of stars, galaxies and nebulae.

The eye surgery is amazing. The finished product doesn't look like what we are used to seeing, but my God, to restore sight to the blind. It's wonderful!

" ”It involves removing a patient's tooth, usually the canine, installing a plastic optical lens ....."

That's why those particular teeth are called "eye teeth", as in the cliché
phrase referring to them, "I'd give my eye teeth to ........

Oops, someone else got to it first!

I love science, seeing how things intertwine to affect life. Some od the details go over my head, but once it gets put into a context that makes sense, I’m in. (Same with history. and math.):

Richard Feynman had some interesting books, I started with ”What Do You Care What Other People Think?” which was also a touching tribute to his late wife. He was certainly able to put science into a human context.

Sometimes science collides with Murphy’s Law: if there is a celestial event, my sky will surely be obscured by clouds, and the days preceding and following will be clear.

An eye for a tooth.

I am squeamish about looking right this minute.

I have caught fish and cleaned them (10 yrs old and on), I’ve seen blood and guts. I have drawn blood from people and I nearly passed out one day when I witnessed a spinal tap. I don’t sleep with a book about quadratic equations or watch surgery videos before going to sleep.

We all have our limits.

I remember in ? grade health class learning about muscles, blood, bone and tissue. I was so creeped out, thinking about how when I walked, I was smooshing all those things together. I went full Woody Allen, it seemed so disgusting.

“Whoa. Aren't canines sometimes called the "eye teeth"?”

LOL, matthias!

Feynman was a socially awkward, brilliant and quirky Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist who was a one of a kind. Many of his fellow colleagues described him in such terms. Many also observed that Feynman's genius was manifested in his practice and ability to look at questions and not yet understood phenomena unconventionally. Thereby sidestepping what he thought were dead ends others had gotten trapped by, to be able to develop new thinking and other approaches to develop new technical knowledge.

(The following is about an anecdote I read some years ago in two different books. I may not remember the specifics precisely, but this is close)

One interesting problem that Feynman resolved in just that way had to do with a bottleneck that developed in the last few months of Manhattan Project work before the Trinity test explosion. The amount of radioactive bomb fuel (uranium and plutonium) was quite limited. They needed to use enough in each bomb for an explosion to result but they couldn't afford to waste any because while production was steady, it was slow.

The problem was, for each type of bomb (there were two), what was the minimum amount of material to use to insure an explosion would result was unknown. There was a process in place to perform very complex mathematical calculations. The work was done by the now known term, a room full of "computers" (women operating manual, analog adding machines) and it was slow. Each iteration took something like 5 weeks and sometimes because mistakes were made and caught, longer. One calculation provided feed stock to use in the next iteration to focus on having a more accurate number.

They simply didn't have enough time to wait for multiple versions of this slow process to be done in order to reach acceptable results. One of the division chiefs, I think it may have been Hans Bethe (another Nobel laureate) asked Feynman to take a look at the algorithms used and calculations being done to see if there was any way speed up the process. As I recall (no spears at me for being off a bit), I recall that Feynman thought about it for a few days and called everyone together for his presentation of a completely different, seemingly off the wall calculation. The audience's first reaction to was "you're crazy, this won't work". They were asked to give Feynman's proposal their own personal detailed review, ask whatever questions they had, and see if they could quickly come to a group consensus as to whether his proposal was viable or useless. Agreement was reached in a few days that Feynman's ideas, though a completely different way to do the calculations, were valid and more accurate. Done his way, new calcs could be done in something less than one week each time, instead of 5 weeks. Several people there at the time said that without this brainstorm, it would have been many months later before the test and bomb drops would have happened, if at all, and that this was perhaps one of the single most significant individual technical contributions to the Manhattan Project.

There are a good half-dozen books about Feynman very much worth reading. Surely You're Joking is an autobiographical collection of different of things that happened during his life. He also wrote another (forgot the title), and there are a couple of third party biographies of this brilliant bongo playing practical joker.

One of his more publicly known accomplishments was solving the problem of why the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion happened. As an intro, you may remember that it had been unusually cold at the launchpad overnight before the scheduled launch. Feynman thought about what might have happened and he was the only one on the investigation commission to reach this finding (later found to be the problem cause).

The narrator of this under 50 second video says that his discovery put him on the map. That's a gross exaggeration because his work was well known and respected by his peers and colleagues and he'd been awarded the Nobel prize more than 20 years earlier.

I think those O-rings may have been made by the Ball Corporation, same company as has made the best canning jar lids in the US. They do have a space and aviation section. If only Feynman could have had a look at the odd canning ring incident I had last week. (The seal separated from the lid all in once piece when I opened the jar.)

My son used to work in the same building as theoretical physicists. He said this is what they looked like for hours at a time. They were just thinking with folded hands, looking at nothing in particular.

And, yes, I like science.

Your son may have mistaken the person sitting at the reception desk as being a scientist.

Theoretical physics work is done with math, as I understand. Exploration is done with a pencil and paper or a marker and a whiteboard. Some thinking time is involved as with most other things but not as your images suggest..

Thanks for taking the time to write and share that, Elmer.

I remember the O- ring discovery and Feynman.

Oh, and Matthias, thanks too for your thoughts and son’s observations.

A very good site,

Quackwatch —

➡️ https://quackwatch.org

Yes, have been interested in science since childhood and made a career as a scientist. Science is a very good way, perhaps even the best way, to keep reality in focus.

Stephen Hawking couldn't even hold a pencil.

I do love science but life sciences is my love like Botany and also Chemistry. Most of what I learned all those years ago is dated. So frustrating to be told Scientific names are eternal when common names aren't and of course just about every wacking big long name I learned has been changed. Common names still working fine. Oh well.

patriciae

My early love of science began in 5th grade, when shown "Hemo the Magnificent" in class. Then decades later, again on tv, came Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos". And somewhat a corollary was James Burke's "Connections" which incorporated science & history in fascinating ways.

These days other programs available, such as Nova and Nature grab me anew. So amazing, and I appreciate having some excellent viewing to stretch my mind. Very soothing in today's general craziness to watch and learn for the layman.

Lots of books that are fun and informative : Amy Stewart ("The Earth Moved" . "Wicked Plants" and "Wicked Bugs" [nature], Sam Kean's "The Violinist's Thumb" [genetics] and "The Disappearing Spoon" [chemistry], David Carroll's "Swampwalker's Journal" [nature again]...

I was fortunate to attend classes at a local science center when I was very young. We got to choose from a number of sciences like biology and astronomy - they even had their own little planetarium. I loved it and it did influence me for the rest of my life - especially being taught how to question and investigate things, and to love learning.

" Stephen Hawking couldn't even hold a pencil. "

That insight certainly adds greatly to the conversation.

None of the people in the photos above are holding pencils so they must have ALS too. And they're all seated, so they must be in wheelchairs.

I didnt say Physicists wrote their ideas out with pencils and markers Elmer. That was you. Obviously you can work it out in your head. People who think out their ideas don't have to be unable to write them easily as they go. I dont get your connection.

" Obviously you can work it out in your head. "

Obviously your understanding of physics is limited.

Petalique mentioned having a book of Feynman's lecture notes but a quick glace above didn't lead me to it, maybe she deleted the comment?

There's a website with Feynman's lecture notes from when he taught Introduction to Physics. First physics course, so think of it as Elementary Physics, I believe taken by incoming Freshmen. The course and the notes date from several decades after he did the work for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize. You're welcome to open and take a gander. The math I saw (from a quick glance) involved trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, and algebra. The kind that can't be done mentally.

Tell me how many pages you find containing no mathematical expressions written down. Very, very few.

If these concepts were things he couldn't refer to with a quick memory jogger and then do "in his head" to explain, then neither could anyone else.

Feynman Lecture Notes

Edit to add:

I thank John Liu for his more germane specific comments. I veered away from a science major in my sophomore year so I completed beginning physics, chemistry and calculus and then went into social sciences. John's background is infinitely more informed.

I also note his on-point comments about the slower evolution of biology relative to other physical science. Biology for a long time was the science people went into who couldn't grasp advanced mathematics. It's no longer such a haven as it becomes far more theoretically quantitative and catches up to other sciences.

How sweet of you Elmer to do all that thinking for me.

Since Hawking had to work things out in his mind, something he was famous for, it is possible and I am sure he very much enjoyed himself doing it which is the point here.

I had a remarkable experience with a good friend in college. He was a music major but on a whim he took a physics course one summer. Just for fun. There is physics in the sounds that make music. Maybe that is why. A few months later he was working on his doctorate. I did not find physics to be very appealing myself.

My Organic Chemistry professor has the entirety of Morrison and Boyd-classic OC text of remarkable length- in his head. He could quote any part and endlessly explicate about it. He loved Chemistry.

patriciae

I wasn't thinking of you as much as readers who might pass by and be misinformed by your comments.

In response to my talking about how physics theory needed to be understood and pursued using math now as in the past, and as shown above, with math far too complex to do mentally, you thought it was relevant as an effort to contradict what I said to mention a paralyzed physicist. Probably the only one ever who made significant advances at various stages of being physically disabled. He obviously needed help from others to work out the math of what he was thinking about. Yet you continue to argue about it even though you're wrong.

Here's a quote I found from a former student of Hawking. There are plenty around if you'd like to be better informed.

" Theoretical physics begins with ideas and concepts, but these then evolve into explicit detailed calculations. Hawking had a remarkable ability to do complex calculations in his head, but he still relied on collaborators to develop and complete his research projects. "

Of Einstein's two relativity theories, one (perhaps special relativity) came about from various mental thought experiments done while riding street cars. Once the nub of the thought was conceived, he relied heavily on mathematical work to investigate, analyze and then demonstrate the gist of his thoughts. Read some books on Einstein as I have, that too will help you better understand.

Have a nice day.

Yes, i love science, and made an enjoyable and fascinating career of it. You soon realize you never stop learning if science-related subjects interest you. I’ve always enjoyed the study of anatomy and plant science even thought those weren’t a part of my career.

A few years ago we became interested in research being done in genome research, especially as is being applied to cancer, neurodegenerative disease research, and plant genome mapping to improve plant performance and productions. Researchers are really making strides in these areas, and I am very hopeful the US is at the threshold of some important breakthroughs in the next 5-10 years.

It is unusual for such people to work on their own. That is why it is unusual for science Nobels to be given to just one person.

But here we are talking enjoying science. I adored it and started taking graduate level courses in my freshman year because some of them weren't offered very often and I was afraid I would miss something. Not particularly useful stuff. Knowing your bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) isn't going to lead to much of anything. Still I once took an astronomy class just to round out my sciences and low if it didn't lead to an actual job. So did the Bryology because for some reason they had lumped in the ferns.

patriciae

His physical disabilities prevented him from doing his own part in HIS OWN WORK without help. Couldn't hold writing implements, the approach used by others. People who conceptualize breakthrough knowledge have to work it along to a certain point before it can be presented and discussed with others or worked on collaboratively. Because it's a field in which theories and their explanations are investigated, expressed and communicated to others mathematically, the quote from his grad student explained that he wasn't able to do what others normally did on their own. He needed help.

You're again showing your lack of understanding. Over and out. You can continue to amuse yourself with efforts to spin what you said into other meanings.

I don't think the pictures were intended to indicate that scientists ONLY sit around and think. But they do sit and think before they get into the nitty gritty of planning with calculations and so forth. Then there are thought experiments, which can't be actually performed, such as the well known Schroedinger's Cat.

I love science! I loved it at school, and when I was little I would get science and educational type kits and equipment as Christmas and birthday gifts. I got a build it yourself crystal radio when I was about six, I had a little (real) microscope, chemistry set, world globe, bug catcher, loved them all. My mother used to say that my first real sentence was "Where do the birds go when it rains?

I went on to study higher maths and physics at university before I was seduced into cooking as a career. Now I'm living my best life as a high school laboratory technician and I get to play with all the cool toys :-D

Loved reading this, collenoz! I also had (asked, teased for) some of those science toys and tools. So much fun.

Retired high school science teacher. I started loving science in 5 th grade. my teacher went out of his way to bring things into the classroom that would interest us. I so wish he had been alive when i started teaching. I am

looking forward to doing things with my grands when they are old enough.

Elmer, I trust my son knew who were the physicists and who were the support staff, as my son is himself a physicist working in virology.

FWIW, for kids, Mr. Wizard and Bill Nye videos are available on YouTube - love Mr. Wizard tho I missed out on the original show, Nickelodeon brought him back when my son was in elementary school and we watched it together. Steve Spangler is another really fun watch for kids of all ages.

And also FWIW, I've read and listened to accounts of Einstein and his 'thought experiments' which led to his scientific revelations. IIRC, one happened while he was traveling on a train.

Almost forgot about a terrific game that's all physics - it's called 'World of Goo', and I have it on my computer @ work.

We didn't have Bill Nye or Mr Wizard, but we had Prof. Julius Sumner Miller and "Why is it So?" I was always glued to the set when it was on and so, as it turns out, was DH.

I read Sumner Miller's autobiography as an adult and it was fascinating. When he was a young, newly married science teacher he and his wife lived in a cottage in the country as it was cheap and their means were slender. There was a railway line nearby. This was the days of coal fired railway engines, and using his knowledge of physics, he worked out where, due to curves in the track, coal was likely to fall off the tall piles on the coal wagons so he could go and forage the dropped coal to supplement their heating.