Word: feynman
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Free Rovers. Physicist Bacher described one way of doing it. At Caltech, he reported, there is now a course known only as Physics X, conducted by Dr. Richard Feynman for students with top-grade averages. It carries no academic credit and is totally unplanned. Theoretical Physicist Feynman has established only two course rules: "Questions can't be prompted by some other Caltech course, and they have to be prompted by some natural phenomenon." In 18 months Feynman's gifted students, mostly sophomores and juniors, have pushed far beyond the standard range into subjects, e.g., quantum mechanics and relativity...
...their little eccentricities. Astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky takes peculiar pride in the fact that he has never given a student a grade of 100 (except once, and then the student turned out to be a fiction created by a band of Zwicky's colleagues). Brilliant young Theoretical Physicist Richard Feynman is a master at breaking lock and safe combinations (during World War II, he made the rounds of Los Alamos safes, depositing "Guess who?" notes in them). In his spare time, Nobel Chemist Linus Pauling likes to blast away at the souped-up claims of advertisers (he once completely deflated...
...hand. "It must be studied by indirect evidence, and the technical difficulty involved has been compared to asking a man who has never seen a piano to describe a piano from the sound it would make falling downstairs in the dark." But for all the exacting labor, adds Physicist Feynman, "there is a great thrill - a real emotional thrill - when you discover something interesting." The mission of Caltech: to pass on that sense of adventure to the scientists and engineers of the future...