Thursday, October 14, 2010

Richard Feynman's excellent way of seeing nature

From the BBC archive comes a fascinating film in which Richard Feynman describes his way of seeing nature. As shown by Feynman, understanding heat, fire, electrical current, etc, in terms of elementary particles is unifying, and therefore satisfying.

In my experience (not at all current), such an approach was never taught to students.  A full understanding of physics should unify mechanics (including continuum mechanics), electromagnetism, thermodynamics, optics, and acoustics, using insights from particle physics.

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