How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries

أحد الأشياء الطريفة في امتلاكك لعقل هو أنك لا تتحكم بالأشياء التي تتجمع وتعلق فيه. وكذلك الحقائق والقصص. ويزداد الأمر سوءًا كلما كبرت سنا أشياء تعلق في ذهنك أحيانًا لسنوات قبل أن تفهم لماذا أنت مهتم بها. قبل أن تعرف أهميتها بالنسبة لك هذه ثلاثة أشياء مرت بي: كان ريتشارد فينمان صبيًا صغيرًا في كوينز ذهب مرة مع والده يمشي ومعه عربته وكرته ولاحظ أنه عندما يقوم بسحب العربة ترجع الكرة لحافة العربة فسأل والده لماذا تعود الكرة إلى نهاية العربة؟ فأجابه والده: القصور الذاتي (مصطلح فيزيائي) فسأله: ما معنى "قصور ذاتي"؟ القصور الذاتي هو المصطلح الذي أعطاه العلماء لظاهرة رجوع الكرة لنهاية العربة لكن في الحقيقة لا أحد يدري فاينمان حصل على شهادته في إم آي تي و برنستون وقام بحل لغز تحطم المكوك الفضائي تشالنجر وفي النهاية حصل على جائزة نوبل للفيزياء على الرسوم البيانية التي تصف حركة الجسيمات دون الذرية وهو يرجع الفضل لمحادثته مع والده كونها أعطته إحساس بأن أبسط الأسئلة قد تحملك إلى حافة المعرفة البشرية وذلك حيث كان يرغب أن ينافس وذلك ما فعله حقا إراتوستينس كان ثالث أمناء المكتبة العظمى بالإسكندرية وقد قدم الكثير من الإسهامات العلمية لكن الشيء الأكثر تميزًا بين أعماله بدأ برسالة تلقاها عندما كان أمين مكتبة من مدينة أسوان والتي تقع جنوب الأسكندرية الرسالة احتوت على حقيقة علقت في ذهن إراتوستينس , والحقيقة كانت أن الكاتب قال: في وقت الظهيرة عند حدوث ظاهرة انقلاب الشمس الصيفي, عندما ينظر أحدهم أسفل البئر يكون بإمكانه رؤية انعكاس صورته في القاع, وكذلك يرى أن رأسه يحجب ضوء الشمس والآن علي أن أخبركم أن اعتقاد أن كريستوفر كولومبوس هو من اكتشف كروية الأرض هراء, إنها ليست حقيقة على الإطلاق. في الحقيقة؛ كل المتعلمين منذ زمن أرسطو كانوا يعرفون أن الأرض كروية وقد أثبت أرسطو ذلك عن طريق ملاحظة بسيطة هو لاحظ أنه في كل مرة تشاهد فيها ظل الأرض على القمر تجده دائريا والشكل الوحيد الذي يشكّل باستمرار ظلاً دائريًا هو الشكل الكروي وهذا المطلوب إثباته, الأرض كروية لكن لم يعرف أحد حجمها حتى أتت إراتوستينس هذه الرسالة وهذه الحقيقة وبذلك علم أن أشعة الشمس عامودية على مدينة أسوان looking down the well it was a straight line all the way down the well right past the guys had up to the sun their costumes to another fact hedonistic stuck in the ground keep alexandria at the same time and the same day that new the sun c_n_n_'s all the solstice the sun cast a shadow that showed it was seven point two degrees off access now if you know the circumference of the circle you have two points on it all you need to know is the distance between those two points and you can extrapolate the circumference three hundred sixty degrees divided by seven point two equals fifty i don't get a little bit of a round number it makes me suspicious of the story too but it's a good stores will continue with it he needed to know the distance between sweat it at alexandria which is good because eric hospice was good and geography in fact he invented the word geography the portraits weights what about every was abroad of commerce and published needed to know how long it took to get there it needed to know the exact distance of heat newberry precisely but the distance between the two cities with five hundred miles multiply that times fifty you get twenty five thousand which is within one-percent but the actual diameter of the earth he did this two thousand two hundred years ago that we live in an age where multibillion dollar pieces of machinery aren't looking for the higgs boson worth discovering particles that may travel faster than the speed of light and all of these discoveries are made possible by technology that's been developed in the last few decades but for most of human history we had to discover these things using our eyes and argues and our minds armand fees out was an experimental physicist in paris is specialty was actually refining and confirming other people's results and this might sound like a built-in also grant but in fact this is the sole of science because there's no such thing as a fact it cannot be independently corroborated and he was familiar with galileo's experiments to try to determine whether or not like how to speak so get waivers workout this really wonderful experiment where he had his assistant had uh... a lamp each one of holding a weapon delhi with opened his weapon system would open his life and they got the time you got a really good big big big just now they're trying to and then they started at two hilltops two miles distant and they did the same time on the assumption from getaway over the flight had a discernible speed the notice it that way at all like coming back ms assistant sweat but light was too fast for delaware uh... he was up by several orders of magnitude when he assumes that light was roughly ten times faeces the speed of sound fees i was aware of this experiment he lived in paris and he set up to experimental stations roughly five and a half miles distant in paris and he solved this problem of galileo's and he did it with that really relatively trivial piece of equipment it was one of these i'm gonna put away the clicker for a second because if i want to engage your brains and uh... so this is a tooth we'll it's got a bunch of not just and it's got a bunch of heat this was the xo solution to sending discrete pulses of light he put a beam behind one of these nazis it by point of being through this knowledge adam you're five miles away that beams bouts governor and coming back to me through this large but something interesting happens as he spins the wheel faster he notices but it seems like adores started to close on the white bean that's coming back to his life why is that it's because the pulse on flight it's not coming back to the same not it's actually hitting into and he speaks the real fast enough and heat fully includes the light and said based in the distance between the two stations at the speed of this we'll have in the production real he calculates the speed of light to within ten percent of its actual value and he does this it eighteen forty-nine this is what really gets me going about science whenever i'm having trouble understanding the concept i go back and i research the people to discover that concept i look at the story of how they came to understand and what happens when you look at what the discovers were thinking about when they made their discoveries as you understand that they are not so different from us we are all back to me and one of the all-star at the same tools but the idea that different branches of science or call fields of study most people think of sciences of clothes black box and in fact it is a open fields and we are all explorers the people that need these discoveries just thought of little bit harder about what they were looking at and the world a little bit more curious and their curiosity change the way people thought about the world and dusty change the world face change the world and so can you