Posted on 05/12/2018 10:00:36 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Richard Phillips Feynman, who was born 100 years ago today, made his mark with contributions to particle physics, superfluidity, and quantum electrodynamics—the last of which won him the 1965 Nobel Prize. That honor alone would have been enough to guarantee him a place in the history of science......
Yet Feynman’s posthumous reputation rests not just on his aptitude for physics but also on his playful personality. He’s known for pulling pranks at Los Alamos, trying his hand at a variety of quirky hobbies, and taking road trips in a Dodge Tradesman Maxivan......
When Feynman pointed out the security gap at a meeting, Edward Teller mentioned that he kept his important secrets in his desk drawer. As Feynman later recounted in a 1975 lecture at Caltech, he couldn’t resist the chance to put his lock-picking skills to the test. So the meeting continues, and I sneak out and go down to see his desk drawer. OK? I don’t even have to pick the lock on the desk drawer. It turns out that if you put your hand in the back, underneath, you can pull out the paper like those toilet paper dispensers…. I emptied the whole damn drawer, put everything away to one side, and went back upstairs.
At the end of the meeting, Feynman suggested to Teller that the two of them should take a look to see if the older physicist’s desk drawer was secure. Teller guessed right away that Feynman had already broken into the desk. “The trouble with playing a trick on a highly intelligent man like Mr. Teller is that the time it takes him to figure [it] out, from the moment that he sees there is something wrong till he understands exactly what happened, is too damn small to give you any pleasure!” Feynman jokingly lamented.
The Feynman lecture series on physics were great.
As are his books.
And the lecture series was on YouTube, the last I looked. Worthwhile for sure.
Youtube is loaded with wonderful clips of eminent physicists and mathematicians telling stories about their work and about each other. Surprisingly entertaining.
Loved him
Got to hear Feynman give the plenary at CLEO in1980. Extraordinary
He developed an awesome reputation as a safe cracker by knowing the factory default combination, because nobody ever changed it.
Somebody should tell the Global Warming folks about that one. They keep guessing and they keep getting contradicted by Nature. They’re wrong.
Most of the time, the answer is right in front of you. It is human nature to overcomplicate things and so think of complex solutions first when trying to solve a problem.
When trying to guess passwords, the fact is that most people rely on simple passwords. At my company, you had to change network passwords every three months and they had to be eight characters long with at least one letter, one number and one special character.
You would not believe how many people thought they were clever by using the season, an underscore and their four digit employee ID. So many people would cycle through these four passwords as each three months came up (with "1234" being their employee number):
Winter_1234; Spring_1234; Summer_1234: Autumn_1234
When I worked at Logan Airport in the 1980s, before HID cards came into being, the doors leading out to the ramp area (where the planes were) had a keypad where you had to punch in a code. The number was almost always penciled in on a nearby wall, on the inside of the door frame, etc.
Even to this day, people still tape their spare car key in the wheelwells of their cars and have a spare house key taped to bottom of mailbox, etc.
It's a good thing most criminals are stupid and have no common sense.
“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” is a great read.
Brilliant guy. Figured out the space shuttle disaster during a big conference meeting on it. Dunked part of an oring in a pitcher of ice water, pulled it out, bent it...it snapped. Right there in front of the emminent bigwigs.
Mic drop.
And then later in the book, he describes the moment when he realized that the whole thing was a set-up, that he had been manipulated into his role as the one who revealed the loss of flexibility at low temperatures of the fluoroelastomer o-ring material.
He said of the people who set him up in his role: "that was real engineering."
Was it the General who was working on his carburator that gave Richard the tip? Haven’t read the book in a while, will have to get it out tonight. I have most of his books and lectures. A brilliant man but still a down to earth kinda guy.
...and sometimes as simple as looking in the desk drawer.
George Fenneman, cool guy!
Bkmk
For later read.
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