|
 Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character :: 0393061329
Description
| Product Description |
|
An omnibus edition celebrating a great scientific mind and a legendary American original—including a live recording.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) thrived on outrageous adventures. In the phenomenal national bestsellers "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" the Nobel Prize-winning physicist recounted in an inimitable voice his adventures trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums, solving the mystery of the Challenger disaster, and much else of an eyebrow-raising, hugely entertaining, and astounding nature. One of the most influential and creative minds of recent history, Feynman also possessed an unparalleled ability as a storyteller, a delightful coincidence celebrated in this special omnibus edition of his classic stories. Now packaged with an hour-long audio CD of the 1978 "Los Alamos from Below" lecture, Classic Feynman offers readers a chance to finally hear a great tale in the orator's own voice.Editorial Descriptions are usually submitted by the manufacturers, publishers and authors. Contact us if you are one of them, and wish to change the above description. |
Reviews
Customer feedback
|
|
Voting |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Author: Guest
Richard Feynman left his hand prints almost everywhere in physics, and here at Los Alamos, he is still a living legend: not just for his scientific brilliance, but for all the color of his personality. His signature characteristic, as you will read in this wonderful book, was simplicity. To wit:
His rule for getting a woman at bar to sleep with him: ask her.
How he showed cold weather destroyed the Challenger space shuttle: take a small o-ring made of the same material from the shuttle o-rings and dunk it in a cup of ice water before the other committee members to show that it becomes brittle.
How to crack a safe when the owner of the safe was away on business and the safe needed to be opened here at Los Alamos during WWII: go into the office with a tool box, close the door, look for the combination in several obvious places, open safe with found combination, make tool noises for an hour, open door and surprise the waiting crowd.
How to solve complex problems in quantum electrodynamics: think about the processes in simple pictorial represenations--the so-called Feynman diagrams. While others worried about the convergence of infinities of terms in perturbation for months or years at a time, he could derive the answer from the primary, first few terms with his diagrams in a matter of hours.
Everything held an interest to Feynman. He traded physics lectures to learn art, dunked himself in sensory deprivation chambers, learned to speak Portugeuse and play the bongo drums. He was also a great lecturer: his written lectures remain as popular and useful today as they were to physics undergrads and graduate students of yesteryear. And Feynman believed that there was plenty of room at the bottom. That is, he believed that we would soon master the world of the atom, allowing us to make factories at the molecular level through bio/nano technology, and he was right. In the lab we have, for example, fused the flagelum of bacteria to blood cells to form the first bio/nano bots that will soon carry smart, killer nano technology chemotherapies right to individual cancer cells. We are learning how to use DNA to lay down molecular wires for molecular computers. These are but two examples that Feynman foresaw in his famous lecture on nano technology. To be sure, there are a lot of ethical, religio and econo promises and perils to these technologies. Read Kurzweil's recent, top selling book: The Singularity is Near to get an idea of the tremendous progress that is being made. Read James Hughes' book Citizen Cyborg for the kinds of political systems we will need to deal with advanced bio/nano techonology. Read my own " Beyond Future Shock (ISBN 1419609440 )" for an awareness of the ethical, religio and econo promises and perils of advance bio/nano technology.
Enjoy Classic Feynman and all the adventures of a curious character. I recommend it.
Sincerely,
Alex Alaniz
Los Alamos, NM
|
Send to Friend
Send to friend
|
|
