I was first introduced to the work of the great Richard Feynman when I came by Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) when I was 15 or 16. I can’t remember if I borrowed the book from my high school library, bought it at a place called the White Elephant or found it amongst hundreds of old Reader's Digest copies left behind in the family house we moved into around that time.
One thing is for certain. The book was truly enthralling – especially to a boy who grew up building Crystal radio sets, spending summer nights looking at the night skies, reading Parabola and cherishing the wonder of all. So coming across Surely You're Joking, soothed by it’s comforting and lighthearted tone was truly a discovery of a lifetime.
Fast forward – we’ve all debated the features and benefits of Microsoft over Apple, some of us have even queued for hours outside an Apple store in the hope to buy their latest gadget; impress our friends, impress ourselves.
Regardless of our biases there is one thing that musts be said about Microsoft. Their Project Tuva which is an enhanced video player platform released to host the Messenger Lectures series titled The Character of Physical Law given by Richard Feynman in 1964 is a must for all who are interested in theoretical physics and in a strange way history. I say history because apart from a good introduction to topics that are still current in physics there is pleasure in seeing how a college campus looked in the fifties,
The project was a collaborative effort between Bill Gates and Microsoft Research that is designed to demonstrate the potential of enhanced video to teach people about the "core scientific concepts" of Feynman's lectures using interactive media.
According to his video introduction, Gates saw the lectures when he was younger. He enjoyed the physics concepts and Feynman's lecturing style, and later acquired the rights to make the video available to the public. He hopes that this will encourage others to make educational content available for free.
Feynman in his The Character of Physical Law lectures makes the most on-point remark dealing with the difficulty of understanding Quantum mechanics. James Bradford DeLong (commonly known as Brad Delong) in the course of something or rather suggests that the theory of relativity really isn’t all that hard. At least, if your standard of comparison is quantum mechanics.
He goes on – ‘While relativity has a reputation for being intimidatingly difficult, it’s a peculiar kind of difficulty. But anyone who studies the subject appreciates that it’s a series of epiphanies the theory are models of clarity. Quantum mechanics is not like that.”
And Feynman:
There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time. There might have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot of people understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than twelve. On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
You can get to project Tuva and the lectures at
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/
