Feynman and the music of physics
April 3, 2008 | 4:09 am
Richard Feynman, the eccentric genius who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, was also known for his popular writings and riveting lectures, his central role in determining the cause of the Challenger space shuttle accident, and his rambunctious spirit. That spirit is in full cry in this video of Feynman playing a drum and chanting an improvised riff on the subject of orange juice.
He wasn’t the first scientist with a musical bent, and he won’t be the last. As Tona Kunz writes in this issue of symmetry,
Music and physics go back a long way. The Greeks used musical constructions to explain the orbits of planets. Albert Einstein played the violin. Werner Heisenberg played piano. Richard Feynman played bongos. Even today, college courses and popular science books such as Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe use musical analogies to explain string theory.
The tradition continues at particle physics labs around the world with bands such as Les Horribles Cernettes, Blue Wine, the Canettes Blues Band, and Drug Sniffing Dogs-not to mention Lynda Williams, the Physics Chanteuse, who croons about things like the demise of the Superconducting Super Collider and the “Love Boson,” an unmeasurable particle that mediates the force of love.
I can prove science is super-sexy,” she says. “I don’t mean pornographic; I mean titillating. It’s cool. It’s slick. String theory and high-energy particle physics are as cutting edge as there is. People are really, really interested in smart, sassy, sexy science and that is what I do.”
Glennda Chui
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6 Comments »
April 3rd, 2008 at 6:10 am
Here’s MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark singing about relativity
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5PkLLXhONvQ
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
They certainly achieved new lows in MIT geekdom!
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Feynman was also a fan of the country of Tanna Tuva of course. There is an album of modern Tuvan throat singing co-produced by Ralph Leighton featuring songs that have old recordings of Feynman (including part of this very same orange juice riff!) mixed in.
The CD is titled “Back Tuva Future”.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I thought you were kidding — late April Fools joke — but sure enough, there it is on the Web! You can listen to excerpts here (although, sadly, the orange juice chant is not included:
http://www.mp3.com/albums/332975/summary.html
The CD also features a duet with Willie Nelson.
The Tuvan singer featured on this album, Kongar-ol Ondar, has also collaborated with other Western artists.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:37 pm
As a point of interest: This video of Ralph Leighton and Richard Feynman drumming was made only one month before Feynman died of cancer, which he had been suffering from for years. Feynman was an amazingly spirited man, full of life, to the very end.
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Thanks for that information about the video. I also want to recommend to our readers your website http://www.feynmanlectures.info/ for more information about Feynman and his classic lecture series.