The Best Teacher I Never Had

师者，传道授业解惑也。一个好的老师能够用最通俗易懂的语言来解释复杂高深的学问。物理学家理查德·费曼（Richard Feynman）就是这样一位老师。他被认为是爱因斯坦之后最睿智的理论物理学家，也是第一位提出纳米概念的人。

但他的贡献不仅仅在科学研究上，他还是个伟大的教育家。他极其认真地对待教学工作，并且真正热爱教学，在充分准备的课上，不时地冒出连珠妙语。

“微软之父”比尔·盖茨评价他为自己“从未遇到过的好老师”。通过视频，让我们来解费曼先生生前为科学普及所做出的贡献。

Richard Feynman was an incredible scientist. He spent most of his time at Caltech the idea of quantum physics, he came up with a thing called Feynman diagrams that he won the Nobel Prize for.

Richard Feynman 是个很棒的科学家。他想到用一个叫做费曼图，使他赢得了诺贝尔奖。

Perhaps even more importantly he was an amazing teacher. He did a series of lectures which were for people who didn't specialize in physics.

或许更重要的是，他是个很棒的老师。那些课程是為了那些不是物理专业的人开设的。

It's such a great example of how he could explain things in a fun and interesting way to anyone. And he was very funny.

解释物理学给任何人听。他本人也非常有趣。

Incidently at the time of Kepler, the problem of what drove the planets around the sun was answered by some people by saying that there were angels behind here, beating their wings and pushing the planet along around in orbit.

沿着轨道拉着这些星体。

As we'll see that answer is not very far from the truth, the only difference is that the angels sit in a different direction and their wings go…

Dr. Feynman used a tough process on himself, where if he didn't really understand something, he would push himself:

"Do I understand this boundary case"?

"我真的理解这些领域吗？"

"Do I understand why we don't do it this other way"?

"我理解為何我们不用其他方式做这件事情吗？"

"Do I really understand this"?

"我真的理解这个吗？"

And because he had pushed himself to have such a deep understanding, his ability to take you through the path of the different possibilities-- was incredible.

所以他能够引领你通往各种不同可能的能力，是很惊人的。

Oxygen for instance in the air, would like to be next to carbon and if they get near each other they'll snap together. If you can get it faster, by heating it up somehow, some way, they come close enough to the carbon and snap in, and that gives it a lot of jiggly motion.

如果这两种分子在附近，他们会紧靠在一起。这会造成相当大的摇摆运动。

Which might hit some other atoms making those go faster so they can climb up and bump against other carbon atoms and they jiggle and make others jiggle and you get a terrible catastrophe. That catastrophe is a fire.

并且使得其他原子也摇晃，然后你就得到一个可怕的灾难。这个可怕的灾难就是火。

He's taking something that is a little mysterious to most people and using very simple concepts to explain how it works.

解释他如何运作。

He doesn't even tell you he's talking about fire until the very end and you feel like you're kinda figuring it out together with him.

然后你觉得你好像理解了，而且是和他一起。

Feynman made science so fascinating, he reminded us how much fun it is and everybody can have a pretty full understanding, So he's such a joyful example of how we'd all like to learn and think about things.

去学习，去思考事情。

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