L'educazione di Richard Feynman

"No pressure. Just lovely, interesting discussions."

Trascrizione dell'audio inglese...

My father had taught me to notice things, and one day I was playing with what we call an express wagon, which is a little wagon which has a railing around it, for children to play with - they can pull it around. It had a ball in it, I remember this, it had a ball in it. And I pulled the wagon, and I noticed something about the way the ball moved. So I went to my father and said:
“Say, pop, I noticed something: when I pull the wagon the ball rolls to the back of the wagon, it rushes to the back of the wagon. And when I’m pulling along and I suddenly stop, the ball rushes to the front of the wagon. Why is that?”
And he said:
“Nobody knows. The general principle is that things that are moving try to keep moving, and things that are standing still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard. This tendency is called inertia, but nobody knows why it’s true.”
Now, that’s a deep understanding. He doesn’t just give me a name, he knew the difference between knowing the name of something, and knowing something. Which I learned very early.
He went on saying:
“If you look closely, you’ll find the ball does not rush to the back of the wagon. It’s the back of the wagon that you’re pulling towards against the ball, but the ball stands still… Or as a matter of fact from the friction starts to move forward, really, and doesn’t move back.”
So I ran back to the little wagon, and set the ball up again, and pulled the wagon from under, and looking sideways I saw that indeed he was right. The ball never moved backwards in the wagon, when I pulled the wagon forward. It moved back relative to the wagon, but relative to the sidewalk it was moving forward a little bit, and the wagon caught up with it.
So that’s the way I was educated by my father. With those kind of examples and discussions.
No pressure, just lovely, interesting discussions.

Commento di un utente di Youtube:
How can you have a child like Feynman? Be a cool father like his was.