I have seen this many times but it never gets old. I wish the Feynman style of teaching and explaining our amazing world were more available. His physics lectures are now available but kids would be extremely anxious to learn if teachers made basic science as fun as Feynman did. He was smart to tune his way of talking so his audience would understand no matter their level of knowledge (i.e. "jiggly motion" describing heated atoms).
I am hoping that the internet and such things as OpenCourseware will allow college professors, teachers and more to become stars of teaching because they know how to communicate and make it fun.
These people should be compensated much more and be seen by many more people such as MIT's Walter Lewin, Feynman and many many others hidden in the fold of our current traditional education systems.
That's because he's so passionate about the subject matter.
I gave up studying physics in secondary school because my teacher was a disaster. Instead of trying to impart a deeper understanding of the subject matter in question, he would focus on getting student to learn off scientific definitions word for word (i.e. having all the "ands", "ats", "is'", "the's" in the correct place). So you would have a textbook answer memorized for the test (perhaps), but sweet fuck all actual knowledge of physics.
To see this kind of passion is refreshing, and the way things should be. (If you've ever seen 'The Wire', seasons 4 & 5 have 'Mr. Prezbo' teaching maths. He struggles to connect with his student until he teaches them how to apply probability theory to dice games, allowing them to gamble more effectively. Unfortunately for him, he also has to 'teach to the test' so that the school can say standardised test scores are going up).
When I was studying for my degree, my favourite course was "Digital Signal Processing" and I'm pretty sure it was because the lecturer was genuinely interested and enthusiastic about the subject. Enthusiasm is very contagious and hard to resist. I think everyone in that course liked it and found it easy to learn, just because we had a teacher who was really enthusiastic about what he was teaching. If only everyone was like this...
I agree it's the passion. I had a chemistry teacher in highschool that was equally as passionate about chemistry as Feynman is here and it really helped me learn the subject.
I loved how he explained the strange attracting/repelling nature of carbon and oxygen as a ball rolling uphill to get to a hole. So simple yet so brilliant.
I am hoping that the internet and such things as OpenCourseware will allow college professors, teachers and more to become stars of teaching because they know how to communicate and make it fun.
These people should be compensated much more and be seen by many more people such as MIT's Walter Lewin, Feynman and many many others hidden in the fold of our current traditional education systems.