Phil Fernbach
speaker
299 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 20 Oct
Phil Fernbach’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Oct 2025 with 1.
Appearances
I think it is being in a very novel environment where things seem different.
Right.
So if we're just in our normal environment, we just go along as if everything is explained and we've already done the hard work of thinking through all of the possibilities and complexities.
And when we're put into a new environment, it's like we're a child again.
Oh, I've never seen that before.
That's curious.
So these things kind of jump out to us, I think, that need to be explained.
And that can probably prompt people to be more curious about asking those why questions.
I love that idea.
We sort of have a license to be dummies, which can be a very powerful thing because when you're in your profession or in your friend group or whatever it is, you do feel this pressure to be sort of a master of that domain because it's the one that you live in.
And when you're thrust into something new, everybody knows you have no idea what's going on.
So it sort of frees you up to ask those questions.
And that's a very wonderful idea.
I like that.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's great to be with you, Shankar. Thank you.
This was one of the most fascinating periods in American history. It was the development of the nuclear bomb at Los Alamos in New Mexico. And these were very eminent physicists who were testing the reaction of the fissile material in the bomb, the plutonium.
And this particular experiment, which the physicist Richard Feynman, as you said, called Tickling the Dragon's Dale, it was a very delicate experiment that involved taking two hemispheres of beryllium that were surrounding the plutonium core and moving them closer and closer together to test the reactivity of the plutonium. So the plutonium is radioactive and gives off neutrons.
Those neutrons rebound off of the beryllium and create the reaction.
As the hemispheres get closer together, you get more of that reaction. What's so delicate and dangerous about this experiment is that if the hemispheres get too close together, it can create a chain reaction that releases a burst of radioactivity that can be very dangerous.
Showing 181–200 of 299 · page 10 of 15
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