Learn Anything Faster By Using The Feynman Technique
Feynman illustration by Sunny Labh inspired by ZenPencils
Richard Feynman is considered to be one of the most miraculous personalities in scientific history. The 1965 Nobel prize winner on QED (along with J. Schwinger and Tomonaga), Dr. Feynman was a remarkably amazing educator and a great physicist. Feynman, along with many other contributions to science, had created a mathematical theory that accounts for the phenomenon of superfluidity in liquid helium. Thereafter, he had fundamental contributions (along with Murray Gell-Mann) to weak interactions such as beta decay. In his later years, Feynman played a significant role in the development of quark theory by putting forward his Parton model of high energy proton collision processes. He also introduced basic new computational techniques and notations into physics. Besides being a physicist, he was at various times repairer of radios, a picker of locks, an artist, a dancer, a bongo player, a great teacher, and a showman who successfully demonstrated the cause of the 1986 Challenger Shuttle Disaster as part of the Roger’s Commission.
A truer description would have said that Feynman was all genius and all buffoon. The deep thinking and the joyful clowning were not separate parts of a split personality… He was thinking and clowning simultaneously.” — Freeman Dyson, 1988 remark on Feynman.
Feynman at Caltech
The genius of Richard Feynman in evident from his three-volume books on physics called The Feynman Lectures on Physics, which are based on his lectures at Caltech during 1961–1963.
In his teenage years, Richard Feynman’s high school did not offer any courses on calculus. As a high-school teenager, he decided to teach himself calculus and read Calculus for the Practical Man.
Credits: Melinda Baldwin
Feynman always believed that if one cannot explain something in simple terms, one doesn’t understand it. A similar quotation is attributed to Albert Einstein as well. Whether or not it originally comes from Feynman, the idea is elegantly true and is, in fact, the basis for the Feynman technique of learning things. Feynman is often attributed as The Great Explainer for his ability to explain complicated concepts in science, particularly physics, in extremely simple and understandable manner, in a way that in people from a non-scientific background could understand.
He opened a fresh notebook. On the title page he wrote: NOTEBOOK OF THINGS I DON’T KNOW ABOUT. For the first but not last time he reorganized his knowledge. He worked for weeks at disassembling each branch of physics, oiling the parts, and putting them back together, looking all the while for the raw edges and inconsistencies. He tried to find the essential kernels of each subject. — James Gleick on his biography of Richard Feynman
What is the Feynman technique?
The Feynman technique of Learning primarily involves four simple steps:
> Pick a topic you want to understand and start studying it
> Pretend to teach the topic to a classroom or a child or someone who is unfamiliar with the topic
> Go back to the resource material when you get stuck
> Simplify and Organize
Step-1:
This technique is applicable to pretty much any discipline or any subject and concept despite the fact that it says the Feynman technique, it is not just limited to math or physics and can be applied to a wide range of fields. The first step to use this technique is to choose the topic and start studying it. Now, studying doesn’t mean just memorizing the facts. In fact, Feynman himself was always against the culture of memorization and he always believed that one should learn and understand the principles rather than memorizing the facts or formulae. Another good method of studying something is to write. Writing something on a piece of paper stimulates the Hippocampus of your brain, the part which is primarily responsible for memory and learning.
Step-2:
If you want to master something, teach it. Teaching is a powerful tool for learning.
Explain the concepts in your own words and try to explain it to a child or someone who is completely unfamiliar with the topic. You can also pretend to explain it to a rubber duck that in on your table. The idea is to try and break things down in as much simpler and plain language as possible. Try to use simple terms and vocabularies and don’t limit yourself to just the facts that you’ve learned. You may as well include an example or two to make things simpler or create your own example making sure that it is associated with the main idea. It becomes much easier for you to understand things at a deeper level if you do so and helps you make connections.
All things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence … there is an enormous amount of information about the world. - His suggestion that the most valuable information on scientific knowledge in a single sentence using the fewest words is to state the atomic hypothesis.
Step-3:
This is an extremely crucial step where you learn where you are lacking. As you are explaining or writing things in simple terms, you always come across certain areas where you are find it difficult to explain or make connections or formulate examples. This is the point where you get back to the resource material, the books or journals or internet, whatever your primary references are, and fill the gaps in your knowledge. You can identify your gaps by several instances, like not being able to explain something or simplify something, forgetting some important points and so on. The idea is to get back, and revise things once again. This helps you understand things even better. In this step, you know the areas that you need to work on and focus on which is a significant part of the learning process. Knowing one’s limitations and then working upon them to understand them better is the point of this step and it works like magic.
Step-4:
Here comes the product now. Once you have corrected your mistakes and straightened your difficulties, you simplify your explanation and make it better. You can always go back to Step-2 and Step-3 until you have a clear-cut understanding of the subject matter. Your notes and examples are now in the simplest form possible and you have a deeper understanding of the topic under study. You can follow this approach over and over again till you feel like you have mastered the concept.
Dr. Feynman teaching at Caltech
After your final explanation is ready, you can convey it to your colleagues or friends or professionals who are familiar with your field of expertise and reflect back upon your understanding of things. This Test-and-Learn method works wonders. Feynman always believed that the truth lies in simplicity and that things can be better understood when they are simple and elegant. It is much easier to overcomplicate things, which often shows the lack of deep understanding. The idea is to make things simple enough to be understood by anyone and then using that tool for deeper understanding for yourself.
The Feynman technique of Learning helps you learn and understand things by a different perspective. It can be used not just for academic purposes but also for building businesses, creating startups, mental models, and many more. The Feynman Technique is a great method to develop mastery over pretty much set of information.
Je suis sûr que tout le monde l'a fait, au moins une fois. Même les athées le font parfois. Eh bien, la curiosité de l'esprit humain nous a obligés à continuer à chercher des réponses aux événements inexpliqués qui nous entourent. Et l'un des plus hallucinants et frustrants de tous les temps, tourne autour du "c". Oui, la « vitesse de la lumière », la limite cosmique sur presque TOUT, sauf — l'expansion flagrante de l'univers.
Mais, pourquoi est - il une limite à t h la vitesse e de la lumière et pourquoi est - il presque impossible à atteindre par tout ce qui possède une masse de repos. Il y a beaucoup plus que ce que l'on voit. Plongeons un peu dans cette anomalie et essayons de la comprendre.
Vitesse de la lumière La vitesse de la lumière (ou photon) est de 186 000 miles/sec. C'est une vitesse phénoménale pour quoi que ce soit à atteindre, mais ce qui est plus intéressant, c'est le changement de perception du temps à de telles vitesses. Pour mettre les choses au clair, oui, la dilatation du temps est réelle. Pour les non-initiés, selonla théorie de la relativité d'Einstein, le temps n'est pas absolu mais en fait, il est relatif et dépend du cadre de référence.
Dilatation du temps Cela signifie que, pour deux personnes (ou observateurs) se déplaçant à des vitesses différentes (ou l'une étant stationnaire et l'autre en mouvement), le temps fonctionnera différemment pour les deux. Quelqu'un voyageant à une vitesse plus rapide expérimentera le temps lentement par rapport à quelqu'un au repos. La raison pour laquelle nous ne remarquons pas la dilatation du temps dans la vie quotidienne est que pour que cela nous soit perceptible, la vitesse doit être très élevée, quelque part autour de 90% de la vitesse de la lumière (ou environ 165 000 miles/sec). La dilatation du temps a été observée dans le cas d'astronautes circulant sur l'ISS. Si vous restez sur l'ISS pendant environ un an puis revenez sur Terre, votre famille aura vieilli de 0,007 seconde de plus que vous. Restez un peu plus longtemps et voyagez à très grande vitesse et la différence sera sur le dessus.
Mais qu'en est-il de Photon étant le dieu ? La dualité onde-particule de la lumière a été établie il y a des décennies. La lumière, lorsqu'elle voyage, prend une forme d'onde, mais dès qu'elle s'immobilise, elle se transforme en une particule appelée "Photon". Maintenant, si nous appliquons la formule de dilatation du temps à quelque chose voyageant à une vitesse qui est de 99% de la vitesse de la lumière, on peut remarquer que lorsque le voyageur éprouve le passage d'un jour, une personne au repos observera un passage d'environ 7 jours. Cela devient plus dramatique lorsque la vitesse augmente encore plus. A 99,99% de la vitesse de la lumière, 1 jour pour le voyageur équivaudra à 70 jours de repos. La formule de la dilatation temporelle est donnée par :
Maintenant, observez l'expression et essayez d'imaginer ce qui se passerait lorsque quelque chose voyage à 100 % de la vitesse de la lumière, c'est-à-dire lorsque « v » est égal à « c ».
v — vitesse du voyageur.
t — temps réel à bord.
t' — temps observé pour un observateur.
Bingo !! Nous rencontrons une erreur mathématique où nous devons superviser la division par zéro. La division par zéro est l'infini, ce qui signifie que le temps s'arrêtera juste pour quelque chose voyageant à la vitesse de la lumière. Ainsi, un observateur au repos peut le voir voyager à travers l'étendue de l'espace pendant des milliards d'années et pour le voyageur, ce sera encore 0 seconde depuis qu'il a commencé le voyage. Ainsi, une onde lumineuse émise lors de la naissance de l'univers pourrait très bien avoir parcouru des milliards de kilomètres au cours des 13,7 milliards d'années, mais à partir de son propre cadre de référence, elle a assisté à la naissance de l'univers il y a juste un instant. Cela signifie que le temps n'existe pas ( ou que son existence n'a pas d'importance) pour la lumière se déplaçant à la vitesse 'c'. Cependant, en limitant tout et n'importe quoi d'autre d'atteindre des vitesses aussi élevées, cela nous empêche d'atteindre le statut divin où le temps n'existe pas ou son existence n'a pas d'importance. La lumière/photon atteint ainsi le statut divin en n'étant pas affecté par le temps et pourtant nous affectant dans son intégralité.
Alors pourquoi ne pas voyager à la vitesse de la lumière ? Eh bien, la réponse directe serait - c'est impossible. Tout simplement parce qu'accélérer à une telle vitesse ou même à 50% de celle-ci nécessiterait une énorme quantité d'accélération, une accélération qui nécessite une très très énorme quantité de puissance et qui n'a pas encore été atteinte par les humains. Le plus rapide que nous ayons atteint est d'environ 290 000 milles à l'heure, réalisé par la sonde Parker en orbite autour du Soleil, qui n'est encore que de 0,04 % de la vitesse de la lumière. Il nous est presque impossible de nous rapprocher de la vitesse de la lumière et, par conséquent, la lumière reste la divinité cosmique pendant un temps immortel.
Les entrées/modifications sont les bienvenues dans les commentaires.
When most of us picture an atom, we think about a small nucleus made of protons and neutrons orbited by one or more electrons. We view these electrons as point-like while rapidly orbiting the nucleus. This picture is based on a particle-like interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is insufficient to describe atoms under normal circumstances. (GETTY IMAGES)
How All Of Physics Exists Inside A Single Atom
Using atoms to probe the Universe reveals the complete Standard Model.
If you wanted to uncover the secrets of the Universe for yourself, all you’d have to do is interrogate the Universe until it revealed the answers in a way you could comprehend them. When any two quanta of energy interact — irrespective of whether they’re particles or antiparticles, massive or massless, fermions or bosons, etc. — the result of that interaction has the potential to inform you about the underlying laws and rules that the system has to obey. If we knew all the possible outcomes of any interaction, including what their relative probabilities were, then and only then would we claim to have some understanding of what was going on.
Quite surprisingly, everything that we know about the Universe can, in some way, be traced back to the most humble of all the entities we know of: an atom. An atom remains the smallest unit of matter we know of that still retains the unique characteristics of the macroscopic world, like physical and chemical properties. And yet, it’s a fundamentally quantum entity, with its own energy levels, properties, and conservation laws. Moreover, even the humble atom couples to all four of the known fundamental forces. In a very real way, all of physics is on display, even inside a single atom. Here’s what they can tell us about the Universe.
From macroscopic scales down to subatomic ones, the sizes of the fundamental particles play only a small role in determining the sizes of composite structures. Whether the building blocks are truly fundamental and/or point-like particles is still not known, but we do understand the Universe from large, cosmic scales down to tiny, subatomic ones. There are nearly 1⁰²⁸ atoms making up each human body, in total. (MAGDALENA KOWALSKA / CERN / ISOLDE TEAM)
Here on Earth, there are approximately ~90 elements that occur naturally: left over from the cosmic processes that created them. An element is fundamentally an atom, with an atomic nucleus made of protons and (possibly) neutrons and orbited by a number of electrons that’s equal to the number of protons. Each element has its own unique set of properties, including:
hardness,
color,
melting and boiling points,
density (how much mass occupied a given volume),
conductivity (how easily its electrons are transported when a voltage is applied),
electronegativity (how strongly its atomic nucleus holds onto electrons when bound to other atoms),
ionization energy (how much energy is required to kick an electron off),
and many others. What’s remarkable about atoms is that there’s only one property that defines what type of atom you have (and hence, what these properties are): the number of protons in the nucleus.
Given the diversity of atoms out there and the quantum rules that govern the electrons — identical particles — that orbit the nucleus, it’s not hyperbole at all to make the claim that everything under the Sun is truly made, in some form or other, of atoms.
Atomic and molecular configurations come in a near-infinite number of possible combinations, but the specific combinations found in any material determine its properties. While diamonds are classically viewed as the hardest material found on Earth, they are neither the strongest material overall nor even the strongest naturally occurring material. There are, at present, six types of materials that are known to be stronger, although that number is expected to increase as time goes onwards. (MAX PIXEL)
Every atom, with its unique number of protons in its nucleus, will form a unique set of bonds with other atoms, enabling a practically unlimited set of possibilities for the types of molecules, ions, salts, and larger structures that it can form. Primarily through the electromagnetic interaction, the subatomic particles that compose atoms will exert forces on one another, leading — given enough time — to the macroscopic structures we observe not only on Earth, but everywhere throughout the Universe.
At their very core, however, atoms all have the property of being massive in common with one another. The more protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus, the more massive your atom is. Even though these are quantum entities, with an individual atom spanning no more than a single ångström in diameter, there’s no limit to the range of the gravitational force. Any object with energy — including the rest energy that gives particles their masses — will curve the fabric of spacetime according to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. No matter how small the mass, or how small the distance scales are that we work with, the curvature of space induced by any number of atoms, whether ~10⁵⁷ (like in a star), ~10²⁸ (like in a human being), or just one (like in a helium atom), will occur exactly as the rules of General Relativity predict.
Instead of an empty, blank, three-dimensional grid, putting a mass down causes what would have been ‘straight’ lines to instead become curved by a specific amount. The curvature of space due to the gravitational effects of Earth is one visualization of gravitation, and is a fundamental way that General Relativity differs from Special Relativity. (CHRISTOPHER VITALE OF NETWORKOLOGIES AND THE PRATT INSTITUTE)
Atoms are also made up of electrically charged particles. Protons have a positive electric charge inherent to them; neutrons are electrically neutral overall; electrons have an equal-and-opposite charge to the proton. All of the protons and neutrons are bound together in an atomic nucleus just a femtometer (~10^-15 m) in diameter, while the electrons orbit in a cloud that’s some 100,000 times larger in size. Each electron occupies its own unique energy level, and electrons can only transition between those discrete energies; no other transitions are allowed.
This is remarkable in two different ways. On the first hand, when an atom comes into the vicinity of another atom (or group of atoms), they can interact. At a quantum level, their wavefunctions can overlap, allowing atoms to bind together into molecules, ions, and salts, with these bound structures having their own unique shapes and configurations for their electron clouds. Correspondingly, they also have their own unique energy levels, which absorb and emit photons (particles of light) only of a particular set of wavelengths.
Electron transitions in the hydrogen atom, along with the wavelengths of the resultant photons, showcase the effect of binding energy and the relationship between the electron and the proton in quantum physics. Hydrogen’s strongest transition is Lyman-alpha (n=2 to n=1), but its second strongest is visible: Balmer-alpha (n=3 to n=2). (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USERS SZDORI AND ORANGEDOG)
These electron transitions within an atom or group of atoms are unique: particular to the atom or the configuration of a group of multiple atoms. When you detect a set of spectral lines from an atom or molecule — whether they’re emission or absorption lines doesn’t matter — they immediately reveal what type of atom or molecule you’re looking at. The internal transitions of the electrons gives a unique set of energy levels, and the transitions of those electrons reveal unambiguously what type and configuration of atom(s) you have.
From anywhere in the Universe, atoms and molecules obey these same rules: the laws of classical and quantum electrodynamics, which govern every charged particle in the Universe. Even inside the atomic nucleus itself, which is internally composed of (charged) quarks and (uncharged) gluons, the electromagnetic forces between these charged particles is tremendously important. This internal structure explains why the magnetic moment of a proton is almost three times the magnitude of the electron’s magnetic moment (but of opposite sign), while the neutron has a magnetic moment that’s almost twice as large as the electron’s, but the same sign.
The lowest energy level (1S) of hydrogen, top left, has a dense electron probability cloud. Higher energy levels have similar clouds, but with much more complicated configurations. For the first excited state, there are two independent configurations: the 2S state and the 2P state, which have different energy levels due to a very subtle effect. (VISUALIZING ALL THINGS SCIENCE / FLICKR)
While the electric force has a very long range — the same, infinite range as gravitation, in fact — the fact that atomic matter is electrically neutral as a whole plays a tremendously important role in understanding how the Universe we experience behaves. The electromagnetic force is fantastically large, as two protons will repel each other with a force that’s ~10³⁶ times larger than their gravitational attraction!
But because there are so many atoms making up the macroscopic objects we’re used to, and atoms themselves are electrically neutral overall, we only notice when either:
something has a net charge, like a charged-up electroscope,
when charges flow from one location to another, like during a lightning strike,
or when charges get separated, creating an electric potential, such as in a battery.
One of the simplest and most fun examples of this comes from rubbing a blown-up balloon on your shirt, and then attempting to stick the balloon either to your hair or to the wall. This works only because the transfer or redistribution of a small number of electrons can cause the effects of a net electric charge to completely overcome the force of gravity; these van der Waals forces are intermolecular forces, and even objects that remain neutral overall can exert electromagnetic forces that — over short distances — can themselves overcome the power of gravity.
When two different materials, such as fabric and plastic, are rubbed together, charge can be transferred from one to the other, creating a net charge on both objects. In this case, the child is charged up, and the effects of static electricity can be observed in his hair (and his shadow’s hair). (KEN BOSMA / FLICKR)
At both a classical and quantum level, an atom encodes a tremendous amount of information about the electromagnetic interactions in the Universe, while “classical” (non-quantum) General Relativity is completely sufficient to explain every atomic and subatomic interaction we’ve ever observed and measured. If we venture even further inside the atom, however, to the interior of the protons and neutrons inside the atomic nucleus, we can reveal the nature and properties of the remaining fundamental forces: the strong and weak nuclear forces.
As you venture down to ~femtometer scales, you’ll first start to notice the effects of the strong nuclear force. It first shows up between the different nucleons: the protons and neutrons that make up each nucleus. Overall, there’s an electric force that either repels (since two protons both have like electric charges) or is zero (since neutrons have no net charge) between the different nucleons. But at very short distances, there’s an even stronger force than the electromagnetic force: the strong nuclear force, which occurs between quarks through the exchange of gluons. Bound structures of quark-antiquark pairs — known as mesons — can be exchanged between different protons and neutrons, binding them together into a nucleus and, if the configuration is right, overcoming the repulsive electromagnetic force.
Individual protons and neutrons may be colorless entities, but the quarks within them are colored. Gluons can not only be exchanged between the individual gluons within a proton or neutron, but in combinations between protons and neutrons, leading to nuclear binding. However, every single exchange must obey the full suite of quantum rules. (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USER MANISHEARTH)
Deep inside these atomic nuclei, however, there’s a different manifestation of the strong force: the individual quarks inside are continuously exchanging gluons. In addition to the gravitational (mass) charges and the electromagnetic (electrical) charges that matter possesses, there’s also a type of charge specific to the quarks and gluons: a color charge. Instead of being always positive and attractive (like gravity) or negative and positive where like charges repel and opposites attract (like electromagnetism), there are three independent colors — red, green, and blue — and three anti-colors. The only allowable combination is “colorless,” where all three colors (or anticolors) combined, or a net colorless color-anticolor combination are permitted.
The exchange of gluons, particularly when quarks get farther apart (and the force gets stronger), is what holds these individual protons and neutrons together. The higher the energy that you smash something into these subatomic particles, the more quarks (and antiquarks) and gluons you can effectively see: it’s like the inside of the proton is filled with a sea of particles, and the harder you smash into them, the “stickier” they behave. As we go to the deepest, most energetic depths we’ve ever probed, we see no limit to the density of these subatomic particles inside every atomic nucleus.
A proton isn’t just three quarks and gluons, but a sea of dense particles and antiparticles inside. The more precisely we look at a proton and the greater the energies that we perform deep inelastic scattering experiments at, the more substructure we find inside the proton itself. There appears to be no limit to the density of particles inside. (JIM PIVARSKI / FERMILAB / CMS COLLABORATION)
But not every atom is going to last forever in this stable configuration. Many atoms are unstable against radioactive decay, meaning that eventually they will spit a particle (or a set of particles) out, fundamentally changing the type of atom that they are. The most common type of radioactive decay is alpha decay, where an unstable atom spits out a helium nucleus with two protons and two neutrons, which relies on the strong force. But the second most common type is beta decay, where an atom spits out an electron and an anti-electron neutrino, and one of the neutrons in the nucleus transforms into a proton in the process.
This requires yet another novel force: the weak nuclear force. This force relies on a wholly new type of charge: weak charge, which itself is a combination of weak hypercharge and weak isospin. The weak charge has proven tremendously difficult to measure, since the weak force is millions of times smaller than either the strong force or the electromagnetic force until you get down to extraordinarily small distance scales, like 0.1% the diameter of a proton. With the right atom, one that’s unstable against beta decay, the weak interaction can be seen, meaning that all four of the fundamental forces can be probed simply by looking at an atom.
Schematic illustration of nuclear beta decay in a massive atomic nucleus. Beta decay is a decay that proceeds through the weak interactions, converting a neutron into a proton, electron, and an anti-electron neutrino. Before the neutrino was known or detected, it appeared that both energy and momentum were not conserved in beta decays. (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS USER INDUCTIVELOAD)
This also implies something remarkable: that if there’s any particle in the Universe, even one we have yet to discover, that interacts through any of these four fundamental forces, it will also interact with atoms. We’ve detected a great many particles, including all the different types of neutrinos and antineutrinos, through their interactions with the particles found within the humble atom. Even though it’s the very thing that makes us up, it’s also, in a fundamental way, our greatest window into the true nature of matter.
The farther inside the building blocks of matter we look, the better we understand the very nature of the Universe itself. From how these various quanta bind together to make the Universe we observe and measure to the underlying rules that every particle and antiparticle obeys, it’s only by interrogating the Universe that we have that we can learn about it. As long as the science and technology we’re capable of constructing is capable of investigating it further, it would be a pity to give up on the search simply because a new, paradigm-shattering discovery isn’t guaranteed. The only guarantee we can be certain of is that if we fail to look more deeply, we won’t find anything at all.
