Richard Feynman: Magnets and Why Questions [video]

http://hus.posterous.com/richard-feynman-magnets-and-why-questions

by husein10 • 15 years ago

71 19 15 years ago

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bugsy2• 15 years ago

I've seen this interview with Feynman before, it is very good. I've also seen the Insane Clown Posse video that mentions that they don't know how magnets work, and observed the backlash against them, that their video celebrates ignorance and so forth. My take is that those criticizing ICP are the ignorant anti-science ones.

I don't know how many physics or calculus classes ICP has taken, but let's assume the lyricist has a PhD in Physics. It's not an unreasonable assumption, to presume knowledge rather than ignorance.

I understand Maxwell's equations. I know what a dipole is and what flux is. Just this modest knowledge by itself is well beyond the educational attainment level of most ICP critics. This becomes rapidly clear when one attempts to discuss physics with them. That is not surprising, but it is surprising how many will criticize another for being ignorant when it is themselves who are ignorant. Maxwell's equations describe some relationships, but they do not tell us what magnetic fields really are. What is a magnetic field? No one really knows. We can describe with these equations what effects they produce and how magnetic and electric forces are interlinked. But what is really causing this stuff? What is it made of?

As Feynman says in the video, in iron you can line up the atoms so electrons spin in the same direction and thus so many induced small magnetic forces are aligned in one direction and thus amplified to the point they are noticeable, but what are these magnetic fields made of?

Nothing apparently, since they can propagate through a vacuum. But matter itself is made of bundles of these same e-m fields. In wave packets, they pretend to be something we like to call particles, which can travel through a vacuum as well but which don't really exist since they are made of waves which are nothing but vibrations. In the end there is nothing traveling through nothingness and all is nothing and no one knows anything. To those who understand physics, ICP comes across as pretty wise and observant. As Feynman says, "It is a very good question."

_ouxp• 15 years ago

That lyric, in isolation, isn't anti-intellectual. But it's followed by "and I don't wanna talk to a scientist, y'all motherfuckers lyin' and givin' me shit".

bugsy2• 15 years ago

You bring up a good counterpoint.

But scientific fraud is extremely common, more than half of peer reviewed journal published research results are wrong, and many if not most professional scientists do research to support a corporate or political agenda. Saying that scientists are liars is not inaccurate, as a general statement, because many scientists are indeed liars, particularly that they claim things which are not true, which is certainly true per Ioannidis (http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...).

As applied to specific scientists it is not necessarily true, but the lyricist does use a collective addressing form. In the loose poetic form of a song "y'all" is not generally interpreted to mean all in a strict mathematical sense, but is a plural second person pronoun that addresses those it addresses.

clownvid2• 15 years ago

Just wanted to clarify a harmless misquote - the corrected is: "and I don't wanna talk to a scientist, y'all motherfuckers lyin', and gettin' me pissed"

The correction draws you into the mindset of a killa fuckin' clown writing lyrics in criticism of an alleged killa fuckin' scientist abusing his/her socially granted authority.

Sure, Scientists can "give him shit", that's fine as it is, but in my opinion, in the corrected form, Shaggy expresses a bit of anger and resentment: "gettin' me pissed".

The corrected, to me, conveys an active and growing defiance. whereas the misquote suggests a passive complacency.

Rather than accepting allegedly fraudulent claims (in this case, the infamous inner workings of magnets), I believe he is offering an allusion of menace to the scientific community members that would mindfully work to subdue his demonstrated and consciously limited, yet poignant, understanding of the nature of reality.

Although some might consider that in poor taste and perhaps ignorant, I believe he is expressing the autonomous freedom of thought awarded to us all by virtue of birth.

Science is a bliss I truly appreciate and I long for keen minds to show me new and exciting discoveries where I can offer in kind in my own studies.

Indeed an interesting conversation. Hope more of y'all chime in on this.

Bustin' out semantics in this bitch.

Panoramix• 15 years ago

>But what is really causing this stuff? What is it made of? The electromagnetic field is one of the fundamental forces of nature, and it is mediated by photons. It is known in detail and we can predict its behavior to uncanny accuracy by means of quantum electrodynamics.

However, I am afraid no answer will be good enough for you, that you want to understand it as good as you "understand" other concepts such as "rock" or "cat". The EM field is inherently different, (for example), in that it acts at a distance. And what does it means that you understand something? Do you understand what a cat is?

Your last paragraph has a few sentences that I disagree with, but particularly : >In the end there is nothing traveling through nothingness and all is nothing and no one knows anything.

Where my version would be: In the end there is matter traveling through space and all is nature and we don't know the whole story yet, but we can predict many things with unbelievable accuracy and make lots of useful things.

bhrgunatha• 15 years ago

Maybe it's a bit trite, to say this, but to me, this is the glory of science. I don't believe we truly _fundamentally_ understand the universe, maybe it's not even possible to actually understand it fully, but the scientific method gives an incredibly useful framework for us to model and reason about the universe and to actually get useful results with that framework - and it works along a whole spectrum of abstraction and different disciplines.

Jach• 15 years ago

Bringing ICP into a Feynman topic, I never imagined...

> I don't know how many physics or calculus classes ICP has taken, but let's assume the lyricist has a PhD in Physics. It's not an unreasonable assumption, to presume knowledge rather than ignorance.

Why would you assume something so ridiculous as a PhD in Physics when a short trip to Google can give you a good basis for inferring their education, especially when your main argument (ignorant people criticize people for assumed ignorance) doesn't rely on their intelligence, but the intelligence of the critics. (You're assuming ignorance in the critics just after you assume knowledge in the band! Why can't everyone who criticizes the song have a PhD in physics?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_E._Clark - "After graduating from high school, Clark took classes on music production at the Recording Institute in Eastpointe, Michigan, and soon got a job at the The Disc Ltd."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bruce#Early_life - "Bruce dropped out of school in ninth grade, and moved in with his friend, Rudy, in River Rouge."

The other guy's page doesn't say, but one can infer a similar status. Also: "Bruce, along with his band mate Joseph Utsler, has had numerous run-ins with the law, having been arrested multiple times starting at the age of seventeen."

For myself, I find the lyrics of ICP's song head-shakingly depressing. Their anti-science line that others cite reminds me of a strawman:

"Quantum physics is all probabilities?" "Well, you have a vector field of complex numbers..." "Complex number?" "Real number with an imaginary component." "Imaginary? lol" "Anyway, you take the squared modulus of a complex number and get something that looks like a probability out of it." "SHUT UP TOO COMPLICATED IT'S MAGIC".

I won't go so far to say I fully understand Maxwell's equations; I can write them down and do stuff with them and prove correspondences with Coulomb's Law, Gauss' Law, and the electrostatic simplifications, but I still need a couple more months of digestion before I understand them.

rubashov• 15 years ago

I don't see why the initial rejection of the question was necessary, or that he really has a much a point to make about "why" being an invalid question. All he had to do was begin explaining magnetic forces and say that if you don't get it you need more background.

Dn_Ab• 15 years ago

It was not so much a rejection but a point he was making. He was not saying that why is invalid. rather, that without a certain context why is not meaningfully answerable for any thing that is outside your domain of regular experience (remember alien example). He is trying to show how to think and consider, that there is an ever escalating level of depth that must be considered that we take for granted and that learning how to ask the right question and introspect is key. Asking the right question is harder than getting the right answer. For a similar example, it is like asking how to use an array for something when what you really want is a hashtable or why this linear approximation is not working for the non linear data. You cannot answer the person without first explaining why what they are asking is not meaningful and cannot be answered until they first understand concept X.

The answer he gave was beyond amazing, there is an immense amount of knowledge there and I learned more from it than just physics. Just like that he gave a whirlwind tour that covered hundreds of years of physics, covering concepts from gravitation and Newton's Law to quantum field theory and does drop hints as to why magnets repel in multiple ways (electromagnetic forces everywhere - normal force and why you don't fall through floor are related - but effect stronger in magnetized iron since electrons aligned to spin in same direction).

And that is what separates someone like Feynman from most scientist. He is aware. He doesn't just regurgitate some encyclopaedic definition that is true but ultimately unenlightening, nor does he give a broken analogy when a good one cannot be given. Instead he leaves you with just the right questions in mind. He weaves an interesting story with a background and motivation and ties things up neatly in a way that you end up learning much more than what you asked for and leave with a deeper insight about everything in general and wanting more. Beyond physics even. I wish I could have met him but I was born too late. Around someone like him being ignorant would be something to bask in and enjoy.

mturmon• 15 years ago

If you read his Lectures in Physics you can enjoy at length that same first-principles, hands-on, everything-is-open-for-explanation method. It's not good as a first physics text, but really fun as a second one.

hackermom• 15 years ago

An interesting insight not so much in the workings of magnetics, but more so in Feynman's labyrinthine mind. This video should be tagged "psychology" :)

davej• 15 years ago

This is the mind of a brilliant educator at work. It would have been very easy for Feynman to give a scientifically literate answer but he realizes that there is no way to give an accessible explanation that doesn't fluff the details.

The following 'meta-answer' that Feynman provides is fascinating.

Cococabasa• 15 years ago

Seems like the answers to the question "Why?" are laid out like a fractal. It just keeps going...

abhayv• 15 years ago

It is a beautiful answer by Feynman

hasenj• 15 years ago

While I agree with what he said, and find it fascinating, I can't help but feel that he still didn't answer the question.

"Why do magnets attract iron only" and "why can't objects intersect" are very interesting questions and I think about them sometimes. He kinda hinted that the explanation for both of them is related to the same basic principle, and that hint is very insightful to me, but I still wish that he went to a bit of depth and explained it a bit further.

jamiecobbett• 15 years ago

This video comes from a BBC series which can be watched here (from the UK at least): http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/feynman/

Richard Feynman: Magnets and Why Questions [video]

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