20220503

Tue May 3 06:00:01 EDT 2022 ======================================== Slept from nine-thirty to six-thirty. Woke briefly around one. Rain in the morning, then rain showers and chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 50s. East winds 5 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation near 100 percent. Ten minutes on the exercise bike in the morning. # Work CTO standup call, Esri workshop agenda call. Matt was out to the office today, so I came home at lunch, before the agenda planning call. # Home * [x] order Toyota parts * [ ] transfer 401k funds Took out garbage, washed linens. Driving this morning, and the screw fell out of my car visor. Just worked its way loose over the years, apparently. Screw: Toyota part 90118-WB688. Hmm, might as well try to order the center arm rest while I'm at it. https://parts.toyota.com/p/Scion_2016_iA/Center-Armrest/69528448/PTMZD1M16002.html https://www.toyotapartsdeal.com Order No.: CTM02612 https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/kilcup.1/262/feynman.html > 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. Servings: grains 3/6, fruit 2/4, vegetables 2/4, dairy 0/2, meat 1/3, nuts 0/0.5 Breakfast: banana, coffee, cucumber salad, egg, naan Lunch: coffee, corn chips Afternoon snack: pear Dinner:

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