Bgsu //free\\: Feynman

Feynman, Nobel laureate, bongo player, safecracker, and the most brilliant showman in physics, has decided this is the most interesting problem in America.

Feynman grins—that famous, impish, world-is-a-toy-store grin. He points at the Music & Speech Building, then at the physics lab across the quad. feynman bgsu

The students expect a lecture. They pack the hall. Engineering majors sit next to flute performance majors. The local paper sends a photographer. The dean clears his throat and approaches the podium, but Feynman isn’t there. He’s in the basement, wearing a leather jacket over a rumpled shirt, crouched next to a steam pipe with a stethoscope and a rubber band. Feynman, Nobel laureate, bongo player, safecracker, and the

Not to give a keynote. Not to accept an honorary degree. He’s coming because someone mentioned, in a footnote of a physical review letter, that the acoustics in the old Music & Speech Building produce a standing wave that, under specific humidity conditions, causes a violin’s G-string to resonate at a frequency that perfectly cancels out the drone of the university’s heating plant. The students expect a lecture

“That there’s no line,” he says. “You think a pipe is plumbing. A string is music. A equation is physics. But nature doesn’t know the difference. She just vibrates . The art is listening to the whole damn song.”