What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard P. Feynman & Richard P. Feynman

Author:Richard P. Feynman & Richard P. Feynman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1987-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

That afternoon, I got a telephone call from General Kutyna.

“Professor Feynman?” he says. “I have some urgent news for you. Uh, just a minute.”

I hear some military-type band music in the background.

The music stops, and General Kutyna says, “Excuse me, Professor; I’m at an Air Force Band concert, and they just played the national anthem.”

I could picture him in his uniform, standing at attention while the band is playing the “Star Spangled Banner,” saluting with one hand and holding the telephone with the other. “What’s the news, General?”

“Well, the first thing is, Rogers told me to tell you not to go over to NASA.”

I didn’t pay any attention to that, because I had already gone over to NASA the day before.

He continued, “The other thing is, we’re going to have a special meeting tomorrow afternoon to hear from a guy whose story came out in the New York Times today.”

I laughed inside: so we’re going to have a special meeting on Monday, anyway!

Then he says, “I was working on my carburetor this morning, and I was thinking: the shuttle took off when the temperature was 28 or 29 degrees. The coldest temperature previous to that was 53 degrees. You’re a professor; what, sir, is the effect of cold on the O-rings?”

“Oh!” I said. “It makes them stiff. Yes, of course!”

That’s all he had to tell me. It was a clue for which I got a lot of credit later, but it was his observation. A professor of theoretical physics always has to be told what to look for. He just uses his knowledge to explain the observations of the experimenters!

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.