Lord777
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We read together. Excerpt from the book by Richard Feynman: "What do you care what others think?"
Even before I was born, my father told my mother: "If a boy is born, he will become a scientist." When I was just a toddler who had to sit in a high chair to reach the table, my father brought home many small tiles - which were discarded - of different colors. We played with them: my father put them vertically on my chair, like dominoes, I pushed the column from one end, and all the tiles were folded.
It didn't take long, and I was already helping to put them. Soon enough, we started to put them in a more complex way: two white tiles and one blue, etc. When my mother saw this, she said, “Leave the poor child alone. If he wants to put a blue tile, let him put it. "
But my father said, “No, I want to show him what patterns are and how interesting they are. It's kind of like elementary mathematics. "So, very early on, he started telling me about the world and how interesting it is.
We had the Encyclopedia Britannica at home. When I was little, my father used to sit me on his knees and read me articles from this encyclopedia. We read about, say, dinosaurs. The book talked about Tyrannosaurus Rex and stated something like, "This dinosaur is twenty-five feet tall, and its head is six feet wide."
Then my dad stopped reading and said: “Let's see what this means. This means that if he were in our yard, he could stick his head in this window. "(We were on the second floor.)" But his head would have been too wide to fit through the window. "Everything he read to me, he tried to translate into the language of reality.
I felt real delight and eerie interest when I thought that there were animals of this size, and that they were all extinct, and no one knows why. As a result, I was not afraid that one of them would climb through my window. However, I learned to translate from my father: in everything that I read, I try to find the true meaning, to understand what, in fact, it is about.
We often went to the Catskill Mountains, where New Yorkers usually go in the summer. During the week, the fathers work in New York and only come for the weekend. On weekends, my father took me for a walk in the forest and told me many interesting things that happen there. When the other moms saw this, they thought it would be great if all the dads would also take the kids for a walk. They tried to work on their husbands, but at first they failed. Then they wanted my father to take other children, but he did not want to, because we had a special relationship with him. In the end, the next weekend, all the fathers had to take their children for a walk.
The next Monday, when the fathers left for work, we children were playing in the yard. And one boy says to me: “Do you see that bird over there? What kind of bird is it? "
I said, "I have no idea what kind of bird it is."
He says, “This is a brown-necked thrush. Your father doesn't teach you anything! "
But it was just the opposite. He already taught me, “See that bird? He says. "It's Spencer's songbird." (I knew that he did not know the real name.) “Well, in Italian it is Chutto Lapittida. In Portuguese: Bom da Peida. In Chinese: Chun-lon-ta, and in Japanese: Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of this bird in all the languages of the world, but when you finish listing these names, you will not know anything about the bird itself. You will only know about the people who live in different places, and what they call her. So let's take a look at this bird and what it does - that's what matters. "(I learned very early on the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing that something.)
He said, “For example, look, the bird is constantly digging in its feathers. Do you see she walks and digs in feathers? "
- Yes.
He says: "Why do you think birds dig in their feathers?"
I said, "Well, maybe their feathers get dirty during the flight, so they fumble in them to get them in order."
“Okay,” he says. - If this were so, then they would have to swarm in their feathers for a long time immediately after they fly. And after they spent some time on the ground, they would not have been digging so much in their feathers - you know what I mean?
- Yes.
He says: "Let's see if they crawl in their feathers more immediately after they sit on the ground."
It was not difficult to see this: there was not much difference between the birds that roamed the earth for some time, and those that had just landed. Then I said, “I give up. Why is the bird digging in its feathers? "
“Because she's worried about lice,” he says. - Lice feed on the protein layers that come off her feathers.
He continued, “Each louse has wax on its feet, which the little mites feed on. They are not able to perfectly digest this substance, so they secrete a material like sugar in which bacteria grow. "
Finally, he says, "So you see that wherever there is a food source, there is some form of life that finds it."
Now I know that perhaps these were not lice, that perhaps ticks do not live on their legs. This story may have been wrong in detail, but what he was telling me was correct in principle.
... Having no experience of communicating with many fathers, I did not realize how wonderful mine is. How did he learn the deep principles of science, how did he learn to love it? How did you know what was behind her and why she should study? I never asked him about it, because I just thought that all these things are known to any father.
My father taught me to pay attention to everything. Once I was playing with the "railroad": a small carriage that ran on rails. There was a ball in the trailer, and when I pulled the trailer, I noticed one peculiarity of the ball's movement. I went to my father and said, “Listen, dad, I noticed something. When I pull the trailer, the ball rolls to the back wall. When I suddenly stop abruptly, the ball rolls to the front wall of the car. Why is this happening? "
“Nobody knows that,” he said. - The basic principle is that a moving body tends to continue its movement, and a resting body tends to remain at rest, unless it is strongly pushed. This tendency is called “inertia,” but no one knows why it occurs.
So this is a deep understanding. He didn't just tell me the name of this phenomenon.
Then he continued: “If you look from the side, you will see that in relation to the ball you are pulling the back wall of the carriage, while the ball remains motionless. But in fact, due to friction, it begins to move forward in relation to the ground. But he does not move back."
I ran to the small trailer, put the ball in it again and pulled the trailer. Looking from the side, I saw that my father was really right. The ball moved slightly forward relative to the track from the side.
This is how my father taught me, using examples and conversations: no pressure - just pleasant, interesting conversations. All of this provided me with motivation for the rest of my life. It is thanks to this that I am interested in all sciences. (It just so happens that I am best at doing physics.)
Even before I was born, my father told my mother: "If a boy is born, he will become a scientist." When I was just a toddler who had to sit in a high chair to reach the table, my father brought home many small tiles - which were discarded - of different colors. We played with them: my father put them vertically on my chair, like dominoes, I pushed the column from one end, and all the tiles were folded.
It didn't take long, and I was already helping to put them. Soon enough, we started to put them in a more complex way: two white tiles and one blue, etc. When my mother saw this, she said, “Leave the poor child alone. If he wants to put a blue tile, let him put it. "
But my father said, “No, I want to show him what patterns are and how interesting they are. It's kind of like elementary mathematics. "So, very early on, he started telling me about the world and how interesting it is.
We had the Encyclopedia Britannica at home. When I was little, my father used to sit me on his knees and read me articles from this encyclopedia. We read about, say, dinosaurs. The book talked about Tyrannosaurus Rex and stated something like, "This dinosaur is twenty-five feet tall, and its head is six feet wide."
Then my dad stopped reading and said: “Let's see what this means. This means that if he were in our yard, he could stick his head in this window. "(We were on the second floor.)" But his head would have been too wide to fit through the window. "Everything he read to me, he tried to translate into the language of reality.
I felt real delight and eerie interest when I thought that there were animals of this size, and that they were all extinct, and no one knows why. As a result, I was not afraid that one of them would climb through my window. However, I learned to translate from my father: in everything that I read, I try to find the true meaning, to understand what, in fact, it is about.
We often went to the Catskill Mountains, where New Yorkers usually go in the summer. During the week, the fathers work in New York and only come for the weekend. On weekends, my father took me for a walk in the forest and told me many interesting things that happen there. When the other moms saw this, they thought it would be great if all the dads would also take the kids for a walk. They tried to work on their husbands, but at first they failed. Then they wanted my father to take other children, but he did not want to, because we had a special relationship with him. In the end, the next weekend, all the fathers had to take their children for a walk.
The next Monday, when the fathers left for work, we children were playing in the yard. And one boy says to me: “Do you see that bird over there? What kind of bird is it? "
I said, "I have no idea what kind of bird it is."
He says, “This is a brown-necked thrush. Your father doesn't teach you anything! "
But it was just the opposite. He already taught me, “See that bird? He says. "It's Spencer's songbird." (I knew that he did not know the real name.) “Well, in Italian it is Chutto Lapittida. In Portuguese: Bom da Peida. In Chinese: Chun-lon-ta, and in Japanese: Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of this bird in all the languages of the world, but when you finish listing these names, you will not know anything about the bird itself. You will only know about the people who live in different places, and what they call her. So let's take a look at this bird and what it does - that's what matters. "(I learned very early on the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing that something.)
He said, “For example, look, the bird is constantly digging in its feathers. Do you see she walks and digs in feathers? "
- Yes.
He says: "Why do you think birds dig in their feathers?"
I said, "Well, maybe their feathers get dirty during the flight, so they fumble in them to get them in order."
“Okay,” he says. - If this were so, then they would have to swarm in their feathers for a long time immediately after they fly. And after they spent some time on the ground, they would not have been digging so much in their feathers - you know what I mean?
- Yes.
He says: "Let's see if they crawl in their feathers more immediately after they sit on the ground."
It was not difficult to see this: there was not much difference between the birds that roamed the earth for some time, and those that had just landed. Then I said, “I give up. Why is the bird digging in its feathers? "
“Because she's worried about lice,” he says. - Lice feed on the protein layers that come off her feathers.
He continued, “Each louse has wax on its feet, which the little mites feed on. They are not able to perfectly digest this substance, so they secrete a material like sugar in which bacteria grow. "
Finally, he says, "So you see that wherever there is a food source, there is some form of life that finds it."
Now I know that perhaps these were not lice, that perhaps ticks do not live on their legs. This story may have been wrong in detail, but what he was telling me was correct in principle.
... Having no experience of communicating with many fathers, I did not realize how wonderful mine is. How did he learn the deep principles of science, how did he learn to love it? How did you know what was behind her and why she should study? I never asked him about it, because I just thought that all these things are known to any father.
My father taught me to pay attention to everything. Once I was playing with the "railroad": a small carriage that ran on rails. There was a ball in the trailer, and when I pulled the trailer, I noticed one peculiarity of the ball's movement. I went to my father and said, “Listen, dad, I noticed something. When I pull the trailer, the ball rolls to the back wall. When I suddenly stop abruptly, the ball rolls to the front wall of the car. Why is this happening? "
“Nobody knows that,” he said. - The basic principle is that a moving body tends to continue its movement, and a resting body tends to remain at rest, unless it is strongly pushed. This tendency is called “inertia,” but no one knows why it occurs.
So this is a deep understanding. He didn't just tell me the name of this phenomenon.
Then he continued: “If you look from the side, you will see that in relation to the ball you are pulling the back wall of the carriage, while the ball remains motionless. But in fact, due to friction, it begins to move forward in relation to the ground. But he does not move back."
I ran to the small trailer, put the ball in it again and pulled the trailer. Looking from the side, I saw that my father was really right. The ball moved slightly forward relative to the track from the side.
This is how my father taught me, using examples and conversations: no pressure - just pleasant, interesting conversations. All of this provided me with motivation for the rest of my life. It is thanks to this that I am interested in all sciences. (It just so happens that I am best at doing physics.)
