Journal by aakarsh

Hod Lipson: Robots that are "self-aware"

2009-12-24T08:23:25Z

Cornel Self Replicating robots

2009-12-24T08:02:50Z

Feynman wobbling plate

2009-12-22T06:14:04Z

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.

Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman'', by Richard Feynman,
pg. 157-158. Dr. Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist

You and Your Research Dr. Richard W. Hamming

2009-12-16T06:42:27Z

You and Your Research
Dr. Richard W. Hamming

Transcription of the Bell Communications Research
Colloquium Seminar - 'You and Your Research' given by
Richard W. Hamming at MRE on March 7, 1986.

J. F. Kaiser
Bell Communications Research
435 South Street, Room 2E-354
Morristown, NJ 07980

ABSTRACT
As a seminar in the Bell Communications Research Colloquia Series, Dr. Richard W. Hamming, a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a former Bell Labs scientist, gave an interesting and stimulating talk, `You and Your Research' to an overflow audience of some 200 Bellcore staff members and visitors at the Morris Research and Engineering Center on March 7, 1986. This talk centered on Hamming's observations and research on the question "Why do so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run?" From his more than forty years of experience, thirty of which were at Bell Laboratories, he has made a number of direct observations, asked very pointed questions of scientists about what, how, and why they did things, studied the lives of great scientists and great contributions, and has done introspection and studied theories of creativity. The talk is about what he has learned in terms of the properties of the individual scientists, their abilities, traits, working habits, attitudes, and philosophy.

http://www.chris-lott.org/misc/kaiser.html

Yuja Wang plays the Flight of the Bumble-Bee

2009-12-13T07:03:31Z

The Promise - Michael Nyman

2009-12-13T03:52:26Z

being a concert pianist

2009-12-10T16:55:42Z

Comptine d'un autre été

2009-12-08T10:40:08Z

Computer Pioneers - Pioneer Computers

2009-12-06T21:41:14Z

Geralad Sussman Legacy of Computer Science

2009-12-06T12:07:03Z

MSS Documentary

2009-12-06T10:17:10Z

Ustad Allah Rakha & Zakir Hussain Tabla Solo Teental

2009-12-04T12:03:12Z

Asimo

2009-12-04T10:45:58Z

japanese car companies love robots

2009-12-04T10:40:23Z

Authors@Google: Randall Munroe of xkcd

2009-12-04T08:30:18Z

FreeBSD Kernel Internals, Dr. Marshall Kirk McKusick

2009-12-04T08:14:06Z

Mozart of the Pickpockets

2009-12-04T06:37:50Z

clos tech talk

2009-11-26T05:51:19Z

Zakir with Shivkumar Sharma

2009-11-24T10:03:33Z

Pt Hari Prasad Chaurasia

2009-11-24T10:00:29Z

fry and laurie

2009-11-24T08:52:55Z

one leg too few

2009-11-20T09:57:38Z

Not only but also 2

2009-11-20T09:31:49Z

Not only but also

2009-11-20T09:24:47Z

Peter Cook - Experiences Down The Mine

2009-11-18T08:51:44Z