Charles Mann

It rushes to the back of the wagon.

And when I'm pulling along and I suddenly stop, the ball rolls to the front of the wagon.

I said, why is that?

And he said, that, he says, nobody knows.

He said, the general principle is that things that are moving try to keep on moving, and things that are standing still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard.

And he says, this tendency is called inertia, but nobody knows why it's true.

Now, that's a deep understanding.

OK, so years later, I dug up the book and discovered that all of the chapters were based on interviews with Caltech faculty where Feynman was a professor.

And that certainly had an influence on me choosing a scientific career and becoming a physicist.

And so 21 years later, I joined Feynman on the Caltech faculty.

So go figure.

My father would describe when someone would come to Feynman with their theory.

And, you know, some highfalutin theory.

And Feynman would say, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

I don't understand anything.

Just a minute.

Remind me, please, you know, what's the anode and the cathode?

Which one is which?

And he'd ask these questions which a lot of people would be reluctant to ask because it sounds like a stupid question.

You know, so anyway, the professor trying to explain his theory would start from the ground up because Feynman would take him back to the first, you know, simple, simple, simple, and then build and build and build.