Richard Feynman. Why.

if you get hold of two magnets and you push them you can feel this pushing between them turn around the other way and then they slam together now what is it the feeling between those two magnets what do you mean what's the feeling between the two there's something there isn't there i mean that the sensation is that there's something there when you push these two magnets together listen to my question what is the meaning when you say that there's there's a feeling of course you feel it now what do you want to know what i want to know is what's going on between these two bits these two bits of metal just repel each other and well then what does that but what does that mean or why are they doing that or how are they doing it uh you're asking i i must say i think that's a perfectly reasonable question of course it's a reason it's an excellent question okay uh but the problem that you're asking you see when you ask why something happens how does a person answer why something happens for example aunt minnie is in a hospital why because she slipped she went out and she slipped on the ice and broke her hip that satisfies it people it's satisfies but it wouldn't satisfy someone who came from another planet knew nothing about things at first you understand why when you break your hip do you go to the hospital how do you get to the hospital with the when the hip was broken well because her husband seeing that she had the hip with book and called the hospital up and sent somebody to get her all that is understood by people now when you explain a why you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true otherwise you're perpetually asking why why did the husband call up the hospital because husband is interested in his wife's welfare not always some husbands aren't interested in their wise wealth when they're drunk and they're angry and so you begin to get a very interesting understanding of the world and all its complications in order to if you try to follow anything up you go deeper and deeper in various directions if for example you go why did she slip on the ice well eyes are slippery everybody knows that no problem but you ask why is i slippery that's kind of curious ice is extremely slippery it's very interesting you say how does it work you could you see so you could either say i'm satisfied that you've answered me ice is slippery that explains it or you could go on and say why is i slippery and then you're involved with something because there aren't many things as slippery as ice it's very hard to get greasy stuff but that's sort of wet and slimy but a solid that's so slippery because it is in the case of ice that when you stand on it they say momentarily the pressure melts the ice a little bit so you got a sort of instantaneous water surface on which you're slipping why on ice and not on other things because ice expands when it water expands when it freezes so the pressure tries to undo the expansion and melts it is capable of melting it but other substances contract when they're freezing and when you push them they're just satisfied to be solid why does water expand when it freezes another substance don't expand when they freeze all right i'm am i answering your question but i'm telling you how difficult a why question is you have to know what it is that you're permitted to understand and allow to be understood and known and what it is you're not you'll notice in this example that the more i ask why it gets interesting afterwards my idea that the deeper thing is the more interesting it and uh we could even go further and say why did she fall down when she slipped that has to do with gravity involves in all the planets and everything else never mind it goes on and on now when you ask for example why two magnets repel there are many different levels it depends on whether you're a student of physics or an ordinary person who doesn't know anything or not if you're somebody who doesn't know anything at all about all i can say is that there's a magnetic force that makes them repel and that you're feeling that thought you say but that's very strange because i don't feel kind of forced like that in other circumstances when you turn them the other way they attract there's a very analogous force electrical force which is the same kind of a question and you say that's also very weird but you're not at all disturbed by the fact that when you put your hand on the chair it pushes you back but we found out by looking at it that that's the same force as a matter of fact the electrical force not magnetic exactly in that case but it's the same electrical repulsions that are involved in keeping your finger away from the chair because everything's made out of its electrical forces in minor in microscopic details there's other forces involved but this is connected to electrical forces it turns out that the magnetic and the electric force with which i wish to explain these things this this repulsion in the first place is what ultimately is the deeper thing that we have to start that we can start with to explain many other things that looked like they were everybody would just accept them you know you can't put your hand through the chair that's taken for granted but that you can't put your hand through the chair when looked at more closely why that involves these same repulsive forces that appear in magnets the situation you then have to explain is why it magnets it goes over a bigger distance than an ordinarily and there it has to do with the fact that in iron all the electrons are spinning in the same direction they all get lined up and they magnify the effect of the force until it's large enough at a distance that you can feel it but it's a force which is present all the time and very common and is in a basic force of almost i mean i can go a little further back if i were more technical but in an early level i've just got to have to tell you that's going to be one of the things you'll just have to take as an element in the world the existence of magnetic repulsion or electrical electrical attraction magnetic attraction i can't explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you for example if we said the magnets attract like as if they were connected by rubber bands i would be cheating you because they're not connected by rubber bands i shouldn't be in trouble you soon asked me about the nature of the bands and secondly if we were curious enough you'd ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again and i would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces which are the very things that i'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain so i have cheated very badly you see so i'm not going to be able to give you an answer to why magnets attract each other except to tell you that they do and to tell you that that's one of the elements in the world of different kinds of forces there are electrical forces magnetic forces gravitational forces and others and those are some of the parts if you were a student you'd go fur i could go further i could tell you that the magnetic forces are related to the electrical forces very intimately that our relationship between the gravity forces and electrical forces remains unknown and so on but i really can't do a good job any job of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else that you're more familiar with because i don't understand it in terms of anything else that you're more familiar with

Channel: firewalker

Views: 2,795,145

Rating: 4.9371133 out of 5

Keywords: Richard, Feynman, Why

Id: 36GT2zI8lVA

Length: 7min 33sec (453 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 02 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Reddit-username_here]

I don't agree with the title. I want this man to explain everything to me.

[u/Skyrun57]

If you were as fascinated as I was by his answer to this conundrum, you should hear how he easily he explains topics like rubber bands and quantum physics. As a teacher I’m in awe and incredibly envious of his ability to break complex topics down to their most relatable elements.

[u/KeyserSozeInElysium]

Carl Sagan : If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe

Just tell me the fucking recipe

[u/IsDedZilla]

“Fucking magnets, how do they work?”

[u/nairdaleo]

What Feynman is saying up there is that there is no satisfactory layman explanation for it. His and our understanding of forces require the understanding of a fair amount of physics and math.

Does “there’s a thing on everything called magnetism that makes a force” satisfy?

Are you satisfied with your understanding of how gravity works? Two masses move towards one another. Is that enough of a How? Because if it’s not, explaining how gravity works is an extensive amount of work that culminates in “…the latest theory is that of the Higgs boson, but it’s not exactly compatible with general relativity which also explains it”

[u/meltingintoice]

One thing I like about this is how much one can learn by the response without actually getting an answer to the specific question (which, at the time Feynman spoke, was impossible to answer).

The other thing I like about the response is that even after taking 3 years of college physics, the answer not only holds up, but does a remarkable job of navigating at the very edge of what was known and unknown at the time. For example, he acknowledges the strong and weak nuclear forces, without ever explicitly referring to them.

[u/FakeRacer]

Seems a little harsh...

Check his wiki...

This man was fully authorized to use all the curse words while talking down to anyone on earth.

[u/bear62]

Had an instructor doing board exams, he asked each of us the same questions 1) you are a molecule of water in the boiler, in this location, what is happening to you? Then he would ask, why? Or how? about 20 times was all it ever took to melt down each of us. Usually by why # 15 we were into quantum realms. BTW, none of us were over 19yrs old. Navy advanced boiler school 1982. Feynman would have liked that school.

[u/Rellgidkrid]

Depends on what the definition of “is” is.