Feynman: Magnets (and Why?) FUN TO IMAGINE 4/ higher quality version! 

SOME PERSPECTIVE: For those of you who think that the main purpose of this video is to hear an explanation about magnetism; you are mistaken. You have been misled by the current title (February 2022) which is "Feynman: Magnets (and Why?) FUN TO IMAGINE 4/ higher quality version!". A better title would be "Feynman describes the difficulties in explaining things". The entire point of this video is to help us understand the difficulties in explaining ANYTHING. Feynman uses the question about magnetism merely as a vehicle to help us understand the difficulties encountered when trying to provide explanations. The main impediment is that the student has one level of understanding and the teacher has a different (and much higher) level of understanding.

The funniest comments are from the people who accuse the father of quantum electrodynamics of not knowing what he is talking about.

I watch this video at least once per day to remind me how a "why" question can be modeled. And I'm not a physicist at all. Most of the comments have yet to address the preceding questions asked to Feynman. I think those questions and how the questions were developed and asked have a huge implication on how Feynman answered the question. 1. Feynman asked about TWO stuff: magnets pushing each other away and magnets pulling each other together. What is the feeling? 2. Clarification. What are these 'feelings'? the pull, the push, the force, what's going on? Answer: They repel each other. 3. The question got further: "Well, then, what is that they're doing or why they're doing? or how they're doing it? The fact that the interviewer asked further and further questions on "why" made Feynman feel the need to explain first, how "why" question works, how to satisfy the question, and how to answer it. In short: "it has to be some framework that you allow something to be true" otherwise you'll perpetually asking "why" and this is exactly what happened at the beginning of the video. Now, I assume Feynman could've answered "its magnetic force" for question no. 3 but I think Feynman then imagine the possibility of the interviewer asking a further question, based on his short experience, "what is a magnetic force, how does that it happens?" So instead, he interrupted the flow and explain the characteristic of "why" question and goes with some examples. Here, he ended the session of explaining how "why" question works by saying "I'm not answering your question, but I'm telling you how difficult a 'why' question is:". He explained a "why" question has (at least) two condition to satisfy: 1) you have to know what it is that you permitted (allowed) to understand, understood, or known 2) you have to know what it is that you NOT allowed to understood or known. After this explanation, to satisfy the question based on the conditions to satisfy a "why" question, he answered for "somebody that doesn't know anything about [magnetic force]": its a magnetic force that repels each other at 4:11 Feynman then further weighing in on why they attract each other when they turned by saying it has some kind of similarity with electrical or magnetic attraction. At this point, the interviewer's questions should be satisfied. Around 4:30 After that Feynman tried to guess and explain on why at all he disturbed about why magnet attracts and repels while ignoring the fact that chair, for example, repels his body as well. Which was turns out, in a microscopic level, works similarly (not exactly the same) as electrical or magnetic forces. So while Feynman was answering the question, he also tried to explain, with examples, on: 1) the characteristic of a why question; 2) how a "why" question can develop endlessly without a proper framework. Now what I want to know is, how is that many people with native English ability in the comment section, failed to understand this flow? You don't need to understand what it is, you just need to LISTEN and pay attention.

I keep returning to this video as if it were a favorite song.

Cop: Sir, please stop for a moment. Why did you speed? Feynman: *Why?* (In 30 minutes) Cop: please leave me alone.

In the comment section, people are offering various insights. While I was pondering this, I stumbled upon a fresh perspective when considering why my 3-year-old niece repeatedly asks 'why' to every answer I provide. It got me thinking about the explanation framework necessary to grasp that a young child's comprehension of life's aspects is still developing. This realization struck me differently. Offering a concise response like 'because it is' might suffice to quiet a child's curiosity, but pondering the imaginative argument, much like Feynman's example, illuminated for me a new understanding of how I might be shaping her growing mental capacity.

It is apparent from the comments that many people fail to understand what Feynman is saying, suggesting instead that he doesn’t know what he is talking about, or that he is just trying to sound clever. In fact, he is attempting to answer a question to which there is no simple answer, and the depth of which the asker doesn’t really recognize. Feynman, in order to give any answer at all, breaks the question down into different parts. First, he deals with the difficulty of answering “Why?” when our normal experience provides no framework for understanding the reasons. People understand why Aunt Minnie is in hospital, because we have a framework for understanding what led to that outcome. We have no comparable framework for understanding magnetism. What then lies between two magnets? Well, what could Feynman say that the interviewer might understand? After all, there isn’t anything else quite like it in most people’s life experience that might be used as a reference. As such, most of us will just have to accept magnetic force as a fact, just as we accept the reality of gravity, or of the reflection of light.

He is basically saying the interviewer doesn't have the requisite knowledge, that he is not in a requisite framework to understand how electro-magnetism works. The ice analogy was to showcase that there is no end to "why questions", if the person asking the question don't have some basic understanding of the very thing he is asking. The part towards the end is the crux of what he was basically trying to say. Without the interviewer having basic understanding of elecro-magnetism, Feynman cannot do a good job of explaining why magets repeal each other since making him understand in layman's terms would be cheating as the very tools (like rubber band pulling back) which he would use to make him understand about electrical repulsion are governed by the same very forces!

Kinda reminds of the Carl Sagan's comment (paraphrasing) that to make an apple pie from scratch, one first has to invent the Universe.

I kept revisiting the old video that linked to this one, and I REALLY appreciate, that after all these TEN years, you uploaded a new better version, and linked us peeps from the old one to the new one. The old one served its purpose, but now we have a better one because you cared enough to post an "update". Thank you!

I've seen this many moons ago. It didn't help me understand how magnets work but it did help me understand how difficult, if not impossible, is to define something without a framework of basic truths that you accept as true.

I am surprised that there are people who believes Feynman is stupid or avoiding questions. Did you even understand the stuff he says in the video? Like honestly, do you think a nobel prize winner in physics wouldn't know how magnets work?

One does not simply call people stupid, but calmly explains to them fundamentally, in details, WHY.

people in the comments missing the point, do you think Feynman doesnt know the physics of it, the question of why as he said is a never ending question like babies when they keep asking why? why? why? ...etc, he can answer him if he said how? or what's going on ? but as he said why something happens never ends. he knows the person is a journalist and he doesnt know the details of physics, no one can explain natural phenomena without physics, that's the whole point of physics. he didnt want to cheat the journalist. so he must be satisfied with the simple explanation of a beginner or go master physics and comeback to know the deeper levels.

So it seems like half of the comments in the comments section are parroting the fancy-word garble of some guy who thinks Tesla was super amazing, Einstein not, and that magnets are easy to explain...which he does with jargonony words meant to give the impression of education through confusion, conveying a "trust me, I know what I am talking about" veneer that lacks actual substance. Anyway, y'all missed the point. The point was not explaining how magnets work. Try explaining an iPhone to Socrates. It's going to take a while to establish common grounds of understanding. That's the point Feynman's making about the feeling felt when holding magnets in your hands.

Richie woke up that day and chose violence.

I have always had Feynman's lectures on my bookshelf all my life but never realized how interesting it would be to sit in his class in person

Seriously, how can people complain? It's an amazing explanation, and his style is so fun. He's one of the last great thinkers, a Nobel laureate, a theoretical physicist - yet he can speak at a level everyone can understand. It's not his fault the reported asked an inherently stupid question (physics is not about "why", it's about "how").

One reason Feynman asked for more clarification at the very start is because there's an important difference between our first-person perception of a feeling - "the feeling between those two magnets", and our third-person observations of magnetism - seeing them repel or attract without feeling it. Just as "the feeling of touching a hot stove" is very different to "the temperature of a hot stove", despite the fact that the latter can cause the former. Explaining first person experiences would require an explanation of consciousness of which far less is known, while far more is known about our third person observations of scientific phenomena.

The interviewer wants him to explain the magnetic force in terms of everyday experience like "the force that stops your hand going through the chair". Feynman is saying that he has it backwards. It is the magnetic force that is the underlying thing which you can use the explain why your hand doesn't go through the chair. You can't explain the deeper reason in terms of a derived phenomenon.

“It depends on whether you’re a student of physics or an ordinary person who doesn’t know anything”.. Lmao I love his honesty

The point here is: to explain "why" something is true you gotta accept something else (what the explanation is based on) as fundamentally true (a base truth) or else you end up in infinite recursion (an endless chain of whys).

Physics isn't about explaining the 'why' questions of the universe. It's about making models in theory that _describe what we actually see in real life with the best accuracy._ The person asking about magnets wasn't asking about what models best explained the mechanism of magnetism. He was asking Feynman not to give a scientific explanation, which is a theory based on hypothesis that has not been disproven (yet), but to give an absolute answer like some kind of God. Feynman knew this, and didn't take the bait. No one can give an answer with the omniscient truth like the reporter wanted, so it's technically a cop-out answer to a cop-out question. Asking a question meant for a god to a human is a cop-out.

Came for magnets, stayed for slippery ice.

The critics of Feynman in this comments section (which in itself is remarkable) are the same people that are absolutely fascinated with Neil Tyson and Bill Nye and of all their “rubber band” explanations. Because Feynman won’t go down to their level of convincing the world that everything in science has an easy explanation, people are upset. As an analogy, take gravity. If you asked a physicist how gravity “works”, what answer would satisfy a non-technical person? To understand the answer, one needs to understand General Relativity, which is rooted in topology and differential geometry. If I said, you can’t fully understand gravity without learning these things, and gave you some Tyson/Nye type fake explanation, would you really be satisfied with that?

The interviewer probably retired after this one. Went to drive a zamboni on the ICE.

this comment section is super disappointing

This makes me think of Gautama Buddha's insight that all things lack intrinsic nature because they arise inter-dependently. The Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna says that all phenomena are inter-dependent and are empty of intrinsic nature. The "why" question is a simple and powerful device to gain insight into emptiness. Feynman does this beautifully albeit from a non-Buddhist perspective.

it’s so great seeing this videos in such a great quality, thanks a lot♥️

That's vastly improved! Makes me feel even more challenged and stimulated by this amazing intellect. Thank you!

Listening to this guy makes me laugh and cry... at precisely the same time! Absolutely Brilliant!

please do all of these Feynman videos in higher quality :) ! thank you ... its amazing

I love this man.

A lot of ppl in the comments saying "he doesn't know", as if that makes him some kind of a fake. That's part of the point! - there is no fundamental reason "why" the forces of nature are what they are. But we can choose to explain why in terms of other things which seem to be more 'fundamental' in the sense that they can explain even more things, if you assume them to be true. But then there is no answer to why those are true. No matter what you have to posit a set of 'laws' that are assumed to be true, and then build a logical system from there. modern physics is the search for the simplest, most unifying way to see the universe

"The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing. Pure mathematics is just an abstraction from the real world, and pure mathematics does have a special precise language for dealing with its own special and technical subjects. But this precise language is not precise in any sense if you deal with real objects of the world, and it is only pedantic and quite confusing to use it unless there are some special subtleties which have to be carefully distinguished." Richard Feynman

I think people who don't know physics are blaming him. Those who understand him can see how great his explanation is.

I hear your question about magnets and I have an answer for you: ICE!

Thanks boss great quality

amazing, reading the comments. instead of listening and trying to understand what he is trying to convey, connecting physics with philosophy, people point out a feeling of being offended and of course the word "condescending" soon makes its appearance.... oh, sign of the times! :)

The point of the video is rather that asking "why" is a lot like taking a house of cards and asking "what is this card A resting on?" You can answer the immediate, that it is resting on another card B. But then that card B is resting on another card C, so card A is really resting on card C. But then it's really resting on... The point is not that this is some unanswerable, infinite regress, but that there are various different levels of answer which you may or may not be satisfied with, and it's important to not ask with the expectation that there is one clear answer

I don't know that I'll ever get tired of this video. So many different pieces of footage of science and speeches and flybys of planets and explosions and microscopic odysseys and whatnot... and yet my favourite science video ever remains 7 minutes of a cranky old geezer in an armchair refusing to answer somebody's question. Brilliant.

God DAMN this quality is great! Beautiful restoration, I gotta buy this

Great lecture with high quality

What's he's basically saying here is that "Why?" questions always lead back to statements we have to accept as self-evidently true - what mathematicians call axioms. Many of us feel content to draw the line at a level of explanation far less deep than the likes of Feynman.

It was fun reading the comments. Some people express their frustrations about feynmans statements. Some even defend that feynman actually explained the question. Discussions to some people even went to personal extent where they would curse that the discussion was stupid. Well what I think about the video is that feynman may forgot that it would be best to answer 'analogically', maybe that would satisfy some of the viewers who viewed it as a waste of time. Personally what feynman answered is that we can actually answer to why if we ask for more whys. This video taught me how to think, if I were a student of his it would be a great thing coz I could think more than to actually settle to an answer that could have more. In reality we just dont know the truth, we just model and assume things and utilize what we actually have and put logic in everything. I must admit what Ive stated is actually confusing to some. Im stating stuffs generally which would need more specifics but overall I must say that Ive had my fun in the comments and learned a lot about the views of others and come to realized that...oh so this is how they viewed this person(feynman)...

Honesty! Honesty lived. Honesty expressed brilliantly! Breathtaking,... at least for me

His answer is actually perfect and the way he replied to your question was amazing and mesmerizing. Such great quality, thank you for uploading a better quality one.

7:35 "Ok, but why?"

We ask ourselves "how do magnets work" when we pick something up using a magnet... Wow it feels like magic doesn't it? But electricity and magnetism (and the weak and the strong nuclear forces) are the *reason* why every atom in our body is held together with every other atom... We don't ask "how does my hand stick to my body" because somehow that's obvious to us... But it isn't... Atoms stay together using magnetism... We didn't know that some centuries ago...

Amazing! Please upload more HQ clips, if you can. Thanks!

feynman

Thanks a lot:)

Brilhante.

Wow ! A gem from 20th century

Water, fire, air and dirt, FxxKING MAGNETS, HOW DO THEY WORK ?!

This reminds me of the 9th track on The Richardz debut!

A+

The inconceivable nature of magnetism

So much pseudo intellectual bullshit going around in this comment section

I was thinking also about another related thing. What do we need to UNDERSTAND something. When I started learning genetics I was reading many articles and they had tons of terms but they were not clear for me. Definitions from Wikipedia didn't help too as they explain something unknown using other unknown and you cannot get the idea, FEEL it, understand it. I even couldn't understand the role of genes and what they mean physically. Is it just abstract notion or something physical. I couldn't understand what proteins are and my poor chemistry knowledge didn't help. Only when I installed program which allowed fold proteins, only after passing several courses about biology and genetics, only after ordering my full genome sequence I started understand something. So the question is "How one person could pass their knowledge, their understanding of something to another one?" What does it mean at all "understand or know something?" Not a separate fact but like understand what are tensors or quantum computing are. I have some ideas about it. I think that to understand any complex notion you need to attach it to something already known, imagine a picture or analogy. Going deeper and deeper you will come to your feelings from the very childhood, to all images you have seen, all senses and feelings like fear, cold, warm, hunger, happiness. They may come from you first days. Anyway our neural network only have senses (external and probably internal) as input. But what is the best way to learn something? I wish to learn and understand many things. Is there a most effective way to transfer knowledge from one person to another?

The question is like the guy asking him why 2+2=4 and without accepting the fact as is would be difficult to explain. Like you could use that continuous why of why logic.

Its interesting reading all of the comments on here, which I think kind of miss the point. 2 years ago I went through suicidal depression and my psychiatrist told me to watch this. I didnt get it until I watched it and then I realised it was a genius thing to get me to do. His point, and Feynman's point, is that you can lose yourself down a rabbit hole of why questions. It can be why magnets repel or why I'm facing depression. There are some things we're simply not able to understand at our current level of knowledge and there should be an acceptance of that. I'd literally go so far as to say that this video helped save my life so it's a bit depressing to say the least to here people say hes, dumb, ignorant etc. Hes not, hes telling you take things on trust in the world.

From time to time when he says something in a certain way he reminds me of Robert Deniro.

Dipole and associated repulsion are a necessity for existence. If particles were to constantly rub against each other, the particles would not have a lifetime of 10 to the power of 31 to 10 to the power of 36 years. Magnetism is therefore a basic requirement for ensuring the longest possible lifespan of physically stable particles. In any case, I see it that way, because at some point the currently best solution prevails in nature.

I wish the full version had this quality.

genius

The correct question is "what necessitates the phenomenon that we call magnetism? i.e. magnetic attraction and repulsion

I came here from ted talk about procastation.

shit this is epic

Feynman's look at 0:43 when he realizes that he's going to school the interviewer is the best. What a legend!

Showed this video to my wife when she asked me "Why did you change your car again?"

Oh how I miss Ricky

Put the "why" in the title since the video is about "why" and not magnets. Makes it easy to find this video instead of the lower resolution one that pops up on top.

Every aspect of energy production in the world is about moving pressures from one place to another, nuclear reactor to move steam pressure, wind pressure for a generator, dielectric pressures from light in solar cells; all electromagnetic and gravitational motions are ether pressures. "Uncovering the missing secrets of magnetism" is a must read for any intelligent mind.

He politely explained his mental superiority

For people not understand what Feynman is trying to get across....You ask about the mystery of magnets but not about the mystery of not being able to put a hand through a chair, all I can tell you is they are caused by the relationship between the interactions of the magnetic and the electrical forces.

Brilliant.. After hearing all his answers, I thought he was great.

He truely is the God oh Physics🔥🔥

Could you upload the complete VIDEO in 1080 p?? PLEASEEE!

This guy physics...

He answered the question the reporter meant to ask, while also subtly chastising him for not phrasing his question well. Reading the comments implying any of you know more about physics than him gave me cancer.

Brilliant answer.

Uh sir, this is a Wendy's

Hmmmmm

Man.. Bill Hader is looking a bit rough.

Insane Clown Posse wrote a song about this exact topic

This is the essence of mystery. The deeper you study, the more interesting it gets. However, at the topical level, we can say to the student only "it exists." Feynman was an avowed atheist, but an excellent theologian.

Based on the comments here, I would say this video does a good job of sorting the wheat from the chaff in terms of higher level thought. Any literalist complaining that Feynman doesn’t know what he is talking about is free to out him- or herself (but mostly him-, judging from the comments) as a fundamentally unhappy person who is missing out on the transcendent beauty of life.

Would his answer have been different if he was asked "how" instead of "why?"

May I be so "bold" as to "Correct" my hero, Dr. Richard? When you turn them around, they do not attract, but they will repel again, they, the magnets will only attract when one is turned, not them. Okay, flame me/this post. Dr. Richard is my hero. Peace. Out.

I pulled my car over once and asked Richard for directions . . . . Never again.

So magnets are basically the electrical equivalent of lasers--it is a coherent electrical field and thus points in ONE direction!

Feynmann The Great, The Why Conumdrum. Only a man's brain can can understand and patiently explain the deeper levels of the "why" questions, how fantastic is that.

Why questions beg and ask for ultimate start or end of something, science deals with how questions,and usefulness rather than why questions and Complete ultimate knowledge

Fuckin magnets, how do they work? 🤷‍♀️

Here's the Answer: 4:00

Why did Aunt Minnie fall down? I am a neuroscientist. Aunt Minnie fell down because her vision, proprioception and motor systems were not coordinating as well as it used to be. With advanced age combination of neurodegeneration and lack of newer neuronal formation have led to all neuronal systems work at a reduced capacity. There are thousands of factors which control why she's having reduced brain function with advanced age. She also has cataract. On top of that, her hormonal system has reduced her bone density to a stage where she's having moderate osteoporosis and a small fall has fractured her bones, needing hospitalization. I don't even want to discuss genetic factors which may have caused her having issues not common in other people of her age. I don't see anything wrong with the question why, but it is sometimes difficult to answer to someone who is not 'in the field'. For most people, 'Aunt Minnie fell down and needs to go to hospital' will do. It's not bad or wrong, it's sufficient unless you want to spend your life down the rabbit hole where scientists spend their entire career.

Look at him squirm hahahahahaha

👍🏻👍🏻❤

Fucking magnets, how do they work?