06 FEB 2015 by ideonexus

 The One-Electron Universe

I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, "Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass" "Why?" "Because, they are all the same electron!" And, then he explained on the telephone, "suppose that the world lines which we were ordinarily considering before in time and space - instead of only going up in time were a tremendous knot, and then, when we cut through the knot, by the pl...
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13 OCT 2013 by ideonexus

 Anecdote About the Cuckoo Clock in China

The gaudy watches of indifferent workmanship, fabricated purposely for the China market and once in universal demand, are now scarcely asked for. One gentleman in the Honourable East India Company’s employ took it into his head that cuckoo clocks might prove a saleable article in China, and accordingly laid in a large assortment, which more than answered his most sanguine expectations. But as these wooden machines were constructed for sale only, and not for use, the cuckoo clocks became all...
Folksonomies: deception anecdote clock
Folksonomies: deception anecdote clock
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A salesman convinces his buyers that his faulty clocks will work once again once the birds come out of hibernation.

25 APR 2012 by ideonexus

 Science is More Than Lone Geniuses

The progress of science depends less than is usually believed on the efforts and performance of the individual genius ... many important discoveries have been made by men of ordinary talents, simply because chance had made them, at the proper time and in the proper place and circumstances, recipients of a body of doctrines, facts and techniques that rendered almost inevitable the recognition of an important phenomenon. It is surprising that some historian has not taken malicious pleasure in w...
Folksonomies: history science
Folksonomies: history science
  1  notes

It is mostly individuals in the right place at the right time and happy accidents.

08 JUL 2011 by ideonexus

 Babies Can Predict Trajectories

1. If you show very young babies a video of a static Big Bird that then explodes into its separately defined parts, they won't be perturbed. Because all the parts had separate edges anyway, they may, for all the babies know. have been separate objects to begin with. But if you show them Big Bird moving first, so that they see that all the parts of the object move together, and then show them the exploding Big Bird, they'll look much longer and more attentively, as if they recognize that somet...
Folksonomies: babies cognition
Folksonomies: babies cognition
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If an object moving at a trajectory disappears behind a screen, the baby will look longer at the other end of the screen if it does not reappear at the proper time and place.

21 MAY 2011 by ideonexus

 The First Moments After Birth

After the baby is born, most doctors, including myself, hold it in our lap momentarily, to allow baby blood in the placenta to pass by gravity through the umbilical cord back into the baby, and to wipe the baby as clean as possible with gauze squares. We feel this is a substitute for the animal mother's licking her baby. This probably has nothing to do with cleanliness but serves as a dermal reflex. It is amazing how many babies void or empty their bladders upon this stimulation. It has been ...
Folksonomies: pregnancy childbirth
Folksonomies: pregnancy childbirth
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What happens medically and biologically in the first moments after a baby is born.