Southern Bread Blog

Lew posted this yesterday over at LRC and it was so good I just had to repost it here. People teach science today in such a disconnected manner, as if the theory and the application are wholly seperate from each other. And as the emailer said on LRC, they pour so much math into it that the concepts themselves get muddy. What a refreshing change to see such a clear explanation of a difficult concept(hint, fast-forward to the 2:00 minute mark to get past the motorcycle stuff):

My wife and I had a really good physics teacher in college that always did an excellent job of making hard concepts easy and clear. He gave an explanation once of what’s really going on when you “square” a number mathematically and why it’s called squaring in the first place. It was really cool, and I always wondered why in the world math wasn’t taught that way in school. What a shame. Reason #598 to homeschool I guess.

Also, here is the Richard Feynman video that prompted the GM one. It’s very good too. It’s Feynman explaining how trains stay on the track and manage to turn corners without a differential mechanism. h The coning sounds similar to how constant velocity transmissions work. Thanks for posting these Lew. Good stuff.