Talk:Richard Feynman

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[edit] Teaching quote

I found the following at [1]:

Richard Feynman, the late Nobel Laureate in physics, was once asked by a Caltech faculty member to explain why spin one-half particles obey Fermi Dirac statistics. Rising to the challenge, he said, "I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it." But a few days later he told the faculty member, "You know, I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don't understand it."

Anybody here know a source for this quote/story? Thanks, Sam nead 19:10, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, Gleick (p. 399) points to Goodstein's 1989 article in Physics Today. I'll read that and check back here. Sam nead 20:02, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Goodstein also includes it in his "Special Preface" to the Feynman Lecture Series, dated 1989 as well. SarahLawrence Scott 03:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bolding

I accidentally hit save while I was about to edit a copy of a comment I had pasted into the comment box while reverting the last change:

The comment had been: (You know what's annoying? Arbitrary bolding of text someone found particularly moving! Why not just bold the entire page? Someone, somewhere, is going to agree that the entire page is moving.)

I had intended to edit it in my reversion to:

You know what's annoying? A blanding of all text to the same level, and the inability to recognize some statements ARE more significant than others. Why not just quote everyone and everything? Because, to paraphrase a recent "Incredible" cartoon: to say everything is special is to say NOTHING is. Some things ARE more notable and more generally noted than others, and I am no disciple of the practice of always blanding everything down to the same level. ~ Achilles

To elaborate a bit. I believe pages are much more attractive and appealing when there is evidence of some actual thought, consideration and selection involved in them, rather than the wholesale gathering of any comments and statements that any half-wit could do. QUOTATION IS THE ART OF SELECTING WHAT SOMEONE SOMEWHERE DOES FIND SIGNIFICANT, and presenting quotes on pages here does involve an intelligent gauging of how significant most people might tend to find them. The option of bolding for emphasis of quotes or sections of quotes that someone finds significant has existed here since early on, and I for one, feel it should continue to be used. Why do we quote Feynman, and not his mother, or his next door neighbor? Because Feynman is known to have stated things that people find important, interesting, and often amusing. ~ Achilles 08:13, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've added "i think i can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics" to the 'attributed' section. I've read this qoute in more than one publication and several websites attribute the quote to Feynman.

I have no more information on the context of the quote or its primary source, but I felt it should be added. ~ My_Name_Is_Joe 23 Jan 2006

[edit] UFO quote

No evidence in this Cornell film clip for the above UFO quote but he might have said it elswhere.
Verbatim quote derived from PBS NOVA "The best mind since Einstein (1993) containing unedited film of lecture given at Cornell 1964. Quote should be upgraded to "Sourced" instead of "Attributed".

I removed the above from the article. Comments or discussions should be here on the talk page. 221.153.157.114 09:38, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Feynman diagrams

First of all, whoever did the pictures- wow. Amazing.

The only problem is that the picture going along with the quote about the electron going in any which way it liked is a picture of a Feynman diagram, which diagrams a particle interaction. His quote is about path integral formulation, which (among a significant amount of other things) helped resolve the problem about single electron interference patterns, in which beams that shot single electrons into a classical Young's double-slit setup produced an interference, which shouldn't happen with single electrons. (All of this can be found in Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time'.) Instead, [2] here is the relevant picture from Wikipedia. Changing to match.

...Or I would, if I knew how. Can someone help me on this? Thanks.

-SZero, [3] on W-Pedia.

The diagram suggested has now been used, as more illustrative of the notion; though I had thought even a basic Feynman diagram was sufficient to evoke the concept, the illustration of 3 of the potential paths is far more evocative. ~ Kalki 08:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A poet once said

Does anyone know what poet Feynman is quoting? A web search only reveals Feynman as a source. Is he being coy here and quoting himself? SarahLawrence Scott 03:28, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Source for last words

"Last words" does not strike me as a source. In particular, there is a variant of Feynman's last words that is often found: "This dying is boring." Given the two variations, a good source should be stated or the quote should be move to the "attributed" section. SarahLawrence Scott 03:37, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "...No one understands quantum mechanics..."

Hi. I have got the following philosophical question:

1. Human brains have found out the laws of quantum mechanics.

2. Human brains lack to imagine these laws.

Isn't this a proof of God's acting? How else could the brain have found a law, which it is unable to understand? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.234.242.132 (talk • contribs) 15:29, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Article discussion pages are for discussing what to put into articles and how to format and arrange them, not to debate the ideas in them. There are thousands of places on the web to engage in these kinds of discussions. (I don't have any specific recommendations, but I'm sure Google and other search engines can help you with this.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:35, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
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