“It’s interesting that some people find science so easy, and others find it kind of dull and difficult,” says Richard Feynman at the beginning of his 1983 BBC series Fun to Imagine. “One of the things that makes it very difficult is that it takes a lot of imagination. It’s very hard to imagine all the crazy things that things really are like.” A true scientist accepts that nothing is as it seems, in that nothing, when you zoom in close enough or zoom out far enough, behaves in a way that accords with our everyday experience. Even the necessary scales — in which, for example, an atom is to an apple as an apple is to Earth itself — are difficult to conceive.
Despite his much-celebrated brilliance as a physicist, Feynman also admitted to finding the quantities with which he had to work unfathomable, at least when examined outside their particular contexts. At the atomic level, he explains, “you’re just thinking of small balls, but you don’t try to think of exactly how small they are too often, or you get kind of a bit nutty.”
In astronomy, “you have the same thing in reverse, because the distance to these stars is so enormous.” We all have an idea of what the term “light year” means — assuming we don’t misunderstand it as a unit of time — but who among us can really envision a galaxy 100,000 light years away, let alone a million?
Feynman discusses these matters with characteristic understanding and humor across Fun to Imagine’s nine segments, which cover physical phenomena from fire and magnets to rubber bands and train wheels. Those who know their physics will appreciate the vividness and concision with which he explains this material, apparently right off the top of his head, and anyone can sense the delight he feels in merely putting his mind to the behavior of matter and energy and their relationship to the world as we know it. And however much pleasure he derived from understanding, he also got a kick out of how much mystery remains: “Nature’s imagination is so much greater than man’s,” he says toward the end. “She’s never going to let us relax.”
Related content:
The Life & Work of Richard Feynman Explored in a Three-Part Freakonomics Radio Miniseries
What Made Richard Feynman One of the Most Admired Educators in the World
Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lecture:” An Animated Retelling
Watch a New Animation of Richard Feynman’s Ode to the Wonder of Life, with Music by Yo-Yo Ma
“The Character of Physical Law”: Richard Feynman’s Legendary Course Presented at Cornell, 1964
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
