03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Perspectives Game
I got a kick, when I was a boy, [out] of my father telling me things, so I tried to tell my son things that were interesting about the world. When he was very small we used to rock him to bed, you know, and tell him stories, and I'd make up a story about little people that were about so high [who] would walk along and they would go on picnics and so on and they lived in the ventilator; and they'd go through these woods which had great big long tall blue things like trees, but without leaves a...A game Feynman played with his father, describing a fantastic scene, and the object of the game was to figure out where it was taking place and from what perspective.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Energy Game
My father dealth a little bit with energy and used the term after I got a little bit of the idea about it. What he would have done I know, because he did in fact essentially the same thing--though not the same example of the toy dog. He would say, "It moves because the sun is shining," if he wanted to give the same lesson. I would say "No. What has that to do with the sun shining? It moved because you wound up the springs." "And why, my friend, are you able to move to wind up this spring?" "I...A game Feynman's father would play with him, asking what made things work, and following the chain of energy back to the sun.