"Ричард Фейнман. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!/Вы, конечно, шутите, мистер Фейнман! (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

heads were always turning from one side to the other. I realized what that
was. When someone wants to make a side remark or interrupt you, he can't
yell, "Hey, Jack!" He can only make a signal, which you won't catch unless
you're in the habit of looking around all the time.
They were completely comfortable with each other. It was my problem to
be comfortable. It was a wonderful experience.
The dance went on for a long time, and when it closed down we went to a
cafeteria. They were all ordering things by pointing to them. I remember
somebody asking in signs, "Where-are-you-from?" and my girl spelling out
"N-e-w Y-o-r-k." I still remember a guy signing to me "Good sport!" - he
holds his thumb up, and then touches an imaginary lapel, for "sport." It's a
nice system.
Everybody was sitting around, making jokes, and getting me into their
world very nicely. I wanted to buy a bottle of milk, so I went up to the guy
at the counter and mouthed the word "milk" without saying anything.
The guy didn't understand.
I made the symbol for "milk," which is two fists moving as if you're
milking a cow, and he didn't catch that either.
I tried to point to the sign that showed the price of milk, but he
still didn't catch on.
Finally, some stranger nearby ordered milk, and I pointed to it.
"Oh! Milk!" he said, as I nodded my head yes.
He handed me the bottle, and I said, "Thank you very much!"
"You SON of a GUN!" he said, smiling.

I often liked to play tricks on people when I was at MIT. One time, in
mechanical drawing class, some joker picked up a French curve (a piece of
plastic for drawing smooth curves - a curly, funny-looking thing) and said,
"I wonder if the curves on this thing have some special formula?"
I thought for a moment and said, "Sure they do. The curves are very
special curves. Lemme show ya," and I picked up my French curve and began to
turn it slowly. "The French curve is made so that at the lowest point on
each curve, no matter how you turn it, the tangent is horizontal."
All the guys in the class were holding their French curve up at
different angles, holding their pencil up to it at the lowest point and
laying it along, and discovering that, sure enough, the tangent is
horizontal. They were all excited by this "discovery" - even though they
had already gone through a certain amount of calculus and had already
"learned" that the derivative (tangent) of the minimum (lowest point) of any
curve is zero (horizontal). They didn't put two and two together. They
didn't even know what they "knew."
I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by
understanding; they learn by some other way - by rote, or something. Their
knowledge is so fragile!
I did the same kind of trick four years later at Princeton when I was
talking with an experienced character, an assistant of Einstein, who was
surely working with gravity all the time. I gave him a problem: You blast
off in a rocket which has a clock on board, and there's a clock on the
ground. The idea is that you have to be back when the clock on the ground
says one hour has passed. Now you want it so that when you come back, your