The making of a scientist 2
- 2. THE MAKING OF A SCIENTIST RICHARD FEYNMAN
- 3. THE MAKING OF THE SCIENTIST We had the Encyclopaedia Britannica at home. When I was a small boy, he used to sit me on his lap and read to me from the Britannica. We used be reading, say, about dinosaurs. It would be talking about the Tyrannosaurus rex, and it would say something like,” This dinosaurs is twenty- five feet high and its head is six feet across.” My father would stop reading and say, “Now, let’s see what they means. That would mean that if he stood in our front yard,he would be tall enough to put his head through our window up here.”( We were on the second floor.) “But his head would be too wide to fit in the window.” Everything he read to me he would translate as best as he could into some reality.
- 4. QUESTIONS 1.How did the boy get an idea about the size of the dinosaur? 2. How did the father’s habit of translating things into real life experiences help Feynman in his later life?
- 5. ANSWERS 1. After reading the details about the dinosaur, his father translated the details into reality placing the dinosaur in their front yard and explained its height in proportion to the building. 2. He learned from his father to translate everything he read and figure out what it really meant.
- 6. ACTIVITY Write a conversation between Feynman and his father.