4 ms·

Feynman explains degenerate matter [video]

40 points by areoform 3y ago

crypt0x 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. Especially not when there are no comments in a thread yet. Threads are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ecshafer 3y ago
The poster of this the 1517 fund has the tagline: "We back dropouts, renegade students, and deep tech scientists at the earliest stages, before anybody else. Want to chat? Reach out:" There is a great irony in a fund that is against education using a video from a scientist who went to MIT for undergrad and Princeton for a Phd, and then taught at Cornell and Caltech, as marketing for their "drop out and work" VC fund.
- areoform 3y ago
  Education doesn't just belong in a building. It's not an artefact of institutions. Education and learning are what we do. With our hands and pencils. Feynman wasn't a product of MIT or Princeton. Feynman learned at MIT and Princeton, but Feynman also learned in the laboratory he setup as a child. He learned when he would go and volunteer at labs during the summer. Or, would go to the library and ask for maps of cats. Feynman became Feynman by sitting in a corner and doing hard problems in class. By learning and doing and becoming better every day. It is antiquated to assume that science can only be done in academia or Big Name Institution. In the middle of the 20th century, the two became intertwined, but today, I think that academia is more of a hinderance than an aid to the process of doing science. Every single scientist I know tells me that they regret becoming a scientist — not because the love of the subject has faded, but because they spend more of their time writing grants and jostling to become a PI than doing science. And the universities take a cut and push them to get more grants, while offering nothing in return. There is no contradiction here. It was different in Feynman's day. It is different now. We live in the age of the internet and cheap compute. We can all learn, grow and do science.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > a scientist who went to MIT for undergrad and Princeton for a Phd, and then taught at Cornell and Caltech Hmm, you left out his work for the Manhattan Project. I get the impression he learned a lot there from the other people he worked with.
  - db48x 3y ago
    That was basically his MO. Learning things and discovering things are really the same thing in the end, and he was good at it. I doubt he ever did anything that didn’t have the possibility of teaching him something new. Even the really mundane things like reviewing textbooks for his local school board, or visiting a high school in Brazil as an invited speaker, he seems to have always approached everything with the goal of learning something. Of course sometimes he only discovered the mundane facts that American textbooks are badly written and the review committees basically never actually read them, but learning was accomplished.
  - ecshafer 3y ago
    Would Feynman have been better off if instead of doing his undergrad and most of his phd, he had instead dropped out after freshman year to work in the manhattan project? Physics typically requires quite a bit of work and studying to be useful. Perhaps in an alternate universe he dropped out and became an inventor of businessman, but I would highly doubt that Feynman would agree with the stance that dropping out is beneficial for the vast majority of people. Feynman lectures on physics seem more inclined toward study very hard to deeply understand what is happening and building intuition.
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  Leadership in technology seems to have had a real drop in general science/math training. Like, the fundamentals. One manager I had a few years ago could not, for the life of him, understand why cold air falls. I had such a hard time with this we went to the break room for experiments, but he just wouldn't fold. "Aw, it's just blowing air down!" More recently, I've been running into an awful lot of people who want to get rid of statistics even as a general concept, I suppose in favor of LLMs powered by "universal data". My jaw's getting a little cramped from biting my tongue to keep from asking, "Why do you think statistics was invented?". One of these bumpkins is going to get someone killed replacing a safety system with a rando public model that's been trained mostly on swearing and antisemitism.
sillysaurusx 3y ago
One interesting thing Feynman figured out is that diffraction can be calculated in terms of spinning arrows. It's procedural, so it's easily turned into a program. I've always wanted to do it someday. To follow this thread, read through QED (https://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/0691024170 https://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/06...) – it's quite readable.
- quietpain 3y ago
  Surely this has been picked up by the raytracing crowd at some point.
- toasted-subs 3y ago
  I always though QED was a strange phrase, it translates to "that which has been demonstrated" but how did they get there?
  - bibanez 3y ago
    "Quod erat demonstrandum"
dimator 3y ago
i can't help but tack on my favorite Feynman video, on magnets: https://youtu.be/Q1lL-hXO27Q https://youtu.be/Q1lL-hXO27Q 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.

40 points by areoform 3y ago

crypt0x 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. Especially not when there are no comments in a thread yet. Threads are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ecshafer 3y ago

The poster of this the 1517 fund has the tagline: "We back dropouts, renegade students, and deep tech scientists at the earliest stages, before anybody else. Want to chat? Reach out:" There is a great irony in a fund that is against education using a video from a scientist who went to MIT for undergrad and Princeton for a Phd, and then taught at Cornell and Caltech, as marketing for their "drop out and work" VC fund.

areoform 3y ago
Education doesn't just belong in a building. It's not an artefact of institutions. Education and learning are what we do. With our hands and pencils. Feynman wasn't a product of MIT or Princeton. Feynman learned at MIT and Princeton, but Feynman also learned in the laboratory he setup as a child. He learned when he would go and volunteer at labs during the summer. Or, would go to the library and ask for maps of cats. Feynman became Feynman by sitting in a corner and doing hard problems in class. By learning and doing and becoming better every day. It is antiquated to assume that science can only be done in academia or Big Name Institution. In the middle of the 20th century, the two became intertwined, but today, I think that academia is more of a hinderance than an aid to the process of doing science. Every single scientist I know tells me that they regret becoming a scientist — not because the love of the subject has faded, but because they spend more of their time writing grants and jostling to become a PI than doing science. And the universities take a cut and push them to get more grants, while offering nothing in return. There is no contradiction here. It was different in Feynman's day. It is different now. We live in the age of the internet and cheap compute. We can all learn, grow and do science.
mcpackieh 3y ago
> a scientist who went to MIT for undergrad and Princeton for a Phd, and then taught at Cornell and Caltech Hmm, you left out his work for the Manhattan Project. I get the impression he learned a lot there from the other people he worked with.
- db48x 3y ago
  That was basically his MO. Learning things and discovering things are really the same thing in the end, and he was good at it. I doubt he ever did anything that didn’t have the possibility of teaching him something new. Even the really mundane things like reviewing textbooks for his local school board, or visiting a high school in Brazil as an invited speaker, he seems to have always approached everything with the goal of learning something. Of course sometimes he only discovered the mundane facts that American textbooks are badly written and the review committees basically never actually read them, but learning was accomplished.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  Would Feynman have been better off if instead of doing his undergrad and most of his phd, he had instead dropped out after freshman year to work in the manhattan project? Physics typically requires quite a bit of work and studying to be useful. Perhaps in an alternate universe he dropped out and became an inventor of businessman, but I would highly doubt that Feynman would agree with the stance that dropping out is beneficial for the vast majority of people. Feynman lectures on physics seem more inclined toward study very hard to deeply understand what is happening and building intuition.
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Leadership in technology seems to have had a real drop in general science/math training. Like, the fundamentals. One manager I had a few years ago could not, for the life of him, understand why cold air falls. I had such a hard time with this we went to the break room for experiments, but he just wouldn't fold. "Aw, it's just blowing air down!" More recently, I've been running into an awful lot of people who want to get rid of statistics even as a general concept, I suppose in favor of LLMs powered by "universal data". My jaw's getting a little cramped from biting my tongue to keep from asking, "Why do you think statistics was invented?". One of these bumpkins is going to get someone killed replacing a safety system with a rando public model that's been trained mostly on swearing and antisemitism.

sillysaurusx 3y ago

One interesting thing Feynman figured out is that diffraction can be calculated in terms of spinning arrows. It's procedural, so it's easily turned into a program. I've always wanted to do it someday. To follow this thread, read through QED (https://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/0691024170 https://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/06...) – it's quite readable.

quietpain 3y ago
Surely this has been picked up by the raytracing crowd at some point.
toasted-subs 3y ago
I always though QED was a strange phrase, it translates to "that which has been demonstrated" but how did they get there?
- bibanez 3y ago
  "Quod erat demonstrandum"

dimator 3y ago

i can't help but tack on my favorite Feynman video, on magnets: https://youtu.be/Q1lL-hXO27Q https://youtu.be/Q1lL-hXO27Q 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.