"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.

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think we should listen to him. I came here knowing we have some sickness in our system of education; what I have learned is that we have a cancer!" and he sat down. That gave other people the freedom to speak out, and there was a big excitement. Everybody was getting up and making suggestions. The students got some committee to gether to mimeograph the lectures in advance, and they got other committees organized to do this and that. Then something happened which was totally unexpected for me. One of the students got up and said, "I'm one of the two students whom Mr. Feynman referred to at the end of his talk. I was not educated in Brazil; I was educated in Germany, and I've just come to Brazil this year." The other student who had done well in class had a similar thing to say. And the professor I had mentioned got up and said, "I was educated here in Brazil during the war, when, fortunately, all of the professors had left the university, so I learned everything by reading alone. Therefore I was not really educated under the Brazilian system." I didn't expect that. I knew the system was bad, but 100 percent it was terrible! Since I had gone to Brazil under a program sponsored by the United States Government, I was asked by the State Department to write a report about my experiences in Brazil, so I wrote out the essentials of the speech I had just given. I found out later through the grapevine that the reaction of somebody in the State Department was, "That shows you how dangerous it is to send somebody to Brazil who is so naive. Foolish fellow; he can only cause trouble. He didn't understand the problems." Quite the contrary! I think this person in the State Department was naive to think that because he saw a university with a list of courses and descriptions, that's what it was. Man of a Thousand Tongues When I was in Brazil I had struggled to learn the local language, and decided to give my physics lectures in Portuguese. Soon after I came to Caltech, I was invited to a party hosted by Professor Bacher. Before I arrived at the party, Bacher told the guests, "This guy Feynman thinks he's smart because he learned a little Portuguese, so let's fix him good: Mrs. Smith, here (she's completely Caucasian), grew up in China. Let's have her greet Feynman in Chinese." I walk into the party innocently, and Bacher introduces me to all these people: "Mr. Feynman, this is Mr. Soandso." "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Feynman." "And this is Mr. Suchandsuch." "My pleasure, Mr. Feynman." "And this is Mrs. Smith." "Ai, choong, ngong jia!" she says, bowing. This is such a surprise to me that I figure the only thing to do is to reply in the same spirit. I bow politely to her, and with complete confidence I say, "Ah ching, jong jien!" "Oh, my God!" she exclaims, losing her own composure. "I knew this would happen I speak Mandarin and he speaks Cantonese!"
Certainly, Mr. Big! I used to cross the United States in my automobile every summer, trying to make it to the Pacific Ocean. But, for various reasons, I would always get stuck somewhere usually in Las Vegas. I remember the first time, particularly, I liked it very much. Then, as now, Las Vegas made its money on the people who gamble, so the whole problem for the hotels was to get people to come there to gamble. So they had shows and dinners which were very inexpensive almost free. You didn't have to make any reservations for anything: you could walk in, sit down at one of the many empty tables, and enjoy the show. It was just wonderful for a man who didn't gamble, because I was enjoying all the advantages the rooms were inexpensive, the meals were next to nothing, the shows were good, and I liked the girls. One day I was lying around the pool at my motel, and some guy came up and started to talk to me. I can't remember how he got started, but his idea was that I presumably worked for a living, and it was really quite silly to do that. "Look how easy it is for me," he said. "I just hang around the pool all the time and enjoy life in Las Vegas." "How the hell do you do that without working?" "Simple: I bet on the horses." "I don't know anything about horses, but I don't see how you can make a living betting on the horses," I said, skeptically. "Of course you can," he said. "That's how I live! I'll tell you what: I'll teach you how to do it. We'll go down and I'll guarantee that you'll win a hundred dollars." "How can you do that?" "I'll bet you a hundred dollars that you'll win," he said. "So if you win it doesn't cost you anything, and if you lose, you get a hundred dollars!" So I think, "Gee! That's right! If I win a hundred dollars on the horses and I have to pay him, I don't lose anything; it's just an exercise it's just proof that his system works. And if he fails, I win a hundred dollars. It's quite wonderful!" He takes me down to some betting place where they have a list of horses and racetracks all over the country. He introduces me to other people who say, "Geez, he's great! I won a hunerd dollas!" I gradually realize that I have to put up some of my own money for the bets, and I begin to get a little nervous. "How much money do I have to bet?" I ask. "Oh, three or four hundred dollars." I haven't got that much. Besides, it begins to worry me: Suppose I lose all the bets? So then he says, "I'll tell you what: My advice will cost you only fifty dollars, and only if it works. If it doesn't work, I'll give you the hundred dollars you would have won anyway." I figure, "Wow! Now I win both ways either fifty or a hundred dollars! How the heck can he do that?" Then I realize that if you have a reasonably even game forget the little losses from the take for the moment in order to understand it the chance that you'll win a hundred dollars versus losing your four hundred dollars is four to one. So out of five times that he tries this on somebody, four times they're going to win a hundred dollars, he gets two hundred (and he points out to them how smart he is); the fifth time he has to pay a hundred dollars. So he receives two hundred, on the average, when he's
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"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
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Preface The stories in this book we
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He Fixes Radios by Thinking! Part 1
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could act like a microphone, and yo
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whole afternoon to find a burnedo
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For logarithms it was a big L exten
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very sharp knife into the table at
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and be more relaxed, and vice versa
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One time I danced with a certain gi
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same waitress all the time. I notic
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"Cut it out, Feynman; this is seri
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could find. Before I tell you what
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observations were made while I was
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I decided there must be an "interpr
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company. His father was the one who
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we could do. Our process was pretty
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out of me, because I didn't like fo
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In the Princeton cyclotron lab they
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When it was time to get up and go o
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and animal, are made of little bric
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some other experiment. I said, "Hel
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We figured if we could get rid of t
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do?" I said I didn't know, and he s
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always something I could find in th
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Atlantic City, where they had vario
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though it was a microscope of forty
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lowing" it occurred. I followed eig
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I asked the Bell Labs if they would
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the fuse won't burn! I decided that
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that he wanted to try to develop. H
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Mexico," the man says, "Oh, so all
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meantime, what instructions go down
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said, "No codes." So I wrote back t
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I looked at it and said, "That look
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people that I wanted were there, an
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different where you go first t
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concentrate on this one. So they st
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it was very difficult. Now, us
Page 77 and 78: was radioactive. It was plutonium.
Page 79 and 80: One guy tries to make something to
Page 81 and 82: Everybody was amazed. It was comple
Page 83 and 84: it appeared, depends on the same li
Page 85 and 86: Hoffman is just the kind of guy to
Page 87 and 88: mathematical constant?" "Oh, no!" d
Page 89 and 90: of little cubbyholes that contained
Page 91 and 92: himself! So I turn around, and sure
Page 93 and 94: "No. Do you?" "Well, I'm keeping an
Page 95 and 96: partly in the strength of our futur
Page 97 and 98: have any room either. I say to the
Page 99 and 100: answered the questions. Everything
Page 101 and 102: around faster than the wobbling. I
Page 103 and 104: ar, with all its "temptations," and
Page 105 and 106: level. . . "Excuse me, sir," I say,
Page 107 and 108: I liked to imitate being drunk, so
Page 109 and 110: you been?" At this moment the guy t
Page 111 and 112: "What?" "That's right," he said con
Page 113 and 114: After that, I tried to do those thi
Page 115 and 116: He was completely washed out, and l
Page 117 and 118: Monday, at the latest. I got all up
Page 119 and 120: The people from the airlines were s
Page 121 and 122: The boss said, "Where're you from?"
Page 123 and 124: eaches, where most people felt thei
Page 125 and 126: super: He answered everything nifty
Page 127: y first learning to pronounce the l
Page 131 and 132: We were eating breakfast in the din
Page 133 and 134: "That must have been it," I said. I
Page 135 and 136: some kind of big pain, and it start
Page 137 and 138: the two piles of hay, with the extr
Page 139 and 140: I must refuse. The reason I have to
Page 141 and 142: hotel. I pushed open the doors and
Page 143 and 144: "Well, yes. . ." "Hoompf." And that
Page 145 and 146: something like, "May I observe your
Page 147 and 148: in fact, a prediction on top of wha
Page 149 and 150: "The one from SoandSo's book."
Page 151 and 152: government, or else I can't talk in
Page 153 and 154: et Jerry that he wouldn't be able t
Page 155 and 156: at the paper. Don't take your eyes
Page 157 and 158: She told me this story: She and her
Page 159 and 160: were these fluorescent colors on bl
Page 161 and 162: they came back and bought it. So th
Page 163 and 164: with the artists from time to time
Page 165 and 166: understand," and everybody else wou
Page 167 and 168: way to understand ethical problems
Page 169 and 170: families all the time, so that if a
Page 171 and 172: that they called "new math," and si
Page 173 and 174: awful! All it was was a game to get
Page 175 and 176: then there was something else. And
Page 177 and 178: one. Then the question came up, "Wi
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I got that shock about three or fou
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had been brought up by my father ag
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She turned to me and said, "Oh! You
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astronomy. *When I was a young prof
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After the colloquium at UCLA Profes
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So the fella who'd been talking to
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andleader said, "Geez! Who was that
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who had come out at the beginning o
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"This is the place," the receptioni
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my way down again. At first it took
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external to the internal psychologi
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people with commonsense ideas are i
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think to laymen. For example, I was
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to have such a policy in teaching
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"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.

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