RICHARD FEYNMAN - Nature of Nature

If I'm sitting next to a swimming pool and somebody dives in and she's not too pretty,

so I can think of something else, I think of the waves and things that have formed in the water,

and when there's lot's of people that have dived in the pool, there's a very great choppiness of all these waves all over the water,

and to think that it's possible, maybe, that in those waves there a clue as to what's happening in the pool,

that some sort of insect or something with sufficient cleverness,

could sit in the corner of the pool and just be disturbed by the waves,

and by the nature of the irregularities and bumping
of the waves have figured out

who jumped in, where and when and what's happening all over the pool.

And that's what we're doing when we're looking at something:

the light that comes out is waves

just like in the swimming pool, except in 3 dimensions instead of the dimensions of the pool and it's going in all directions

and we have a 8'th of an inch black whole into which these things go,

which is particularly sensitive to parts of the wave that are coming in a particular direction

and it's not particularly sensitive when they're coming in at the wrong angle,

which we say is from the corner of our eye,

and if we want to get more information from the corner of our eye, we swivel this ball about so that the hole moves from place to place.

Then, ...

it's quite wonderful that we figure out so easy;

that's really because the light waves are easier than the waves in water are a little bit more complicated;

it would have been harder for the bug than for us, but it's the same idea,

to figure out what the thing is that we're looking at at a distance,

and it's really kind-of incredible because when I'm looking at you, someone standing to my left can see somebody who's standing at my right;

that is, the light could be going right across this way, the waves are going this way, the waves are going this way, the waves are going this way,

it's just a complete network.

Now, it's easy to just think of them as arrows passing each other, but that's not the way it is,

because all of this is something shaking -it's called the electric field,

but we don't have to bother with what it is- it's just like the water height is going up and down.

So there's some quantity shaking about here

and the combination of motions that's so elaborate and complicated that the result is to produce an influence which makes me see you.

At the same time, completely undisturbed by the fact that there are influences that represent the other guy seeing him on this side.

So that there's this TREMENDOUS mess

of waves all over in space which we call... which is the light bouncing around the room and going from one thing to the other,

because of course most of the room doesn't have 8'th inch black holes. It's not interested in that light,

but the light is there anyway, and it bounces off this, and it bounces off that,

and all this is going on, and yet we can sort it out with this instrument.

But beside all that, you see, those waves that I was talking about in the water,

maybe they're so big - some of them - and then there's slower swashes which are longer, and shorter.

Perhaps that animal is making it's study only using waves between this length and that length,

so it turns out that the eye is only using waves between this length and that length,

except those two lengths are 100,000'th of an inch - 100,000'th of an inch big,

and what about the slower swashes?

The waves that go more slowly, that have a longer distance from crest to trough.

Those represent heat. We feel those, but our eye doesn't see them focused very well, we don't in fact at all.

The shorter waves are blue, [...] the longer waves are red. But when it gets longer than that then we call them infrared.

And all this is in there at the same time. That's the heat.

And then these waves get longer and longer, and all through the same space, all these things are going on at the same time,

so that in this space, there's not only my vision of you,

but information from Moscow Radio that's being broadcasted at present moment, and the seeing of somebody from Peru.

So this big field, this - this area of irregular motions of this electric field, this vibration, contains this tremendous information,

and it's ALL REALLY there, that's what gets you.

If you don't believe it, then you pick a piece of wire and connect it to a box

and in the wire the electrons would be pushed back and forth by this electric field, swashing just at the right speed for the certain kind of long waves,

and you turn some knobs on the box to get the swashing just right, and you hear Radio Moscow!

Then you know that it was there. How else did it get there?

It was there all the time. It is only when you turn on the radio that you notice it.

But that all these things are going through the room at the same time which everybody knows,

but you gotta stop and think about it to really get the pleasure about the complexity

- the INCONCEIVABLE nature of nature.