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

block. My friend was a pretty good showman, and I kind of liked that too. We
did our tricks on a little table, with Bunsen burners at each end going all
the time. On the burners we had watch glass plates (flat glass discs) with
iodine on them, which made a beautiful purple vapor that went up on each
side of the table while the show went on. It was great! We did a lot of
tricks, such as turning "wine" into water, and other chemical color changes.
For our finale, we did a trick that used something which we had discovered.
I would put my hands (secretly) first into a sink of water, and then into
benzine. Then I would "accidentally" brush by one of the Bunsen burners, and
one hand would light up. I'd clap my hands, and both hands would then be
burning. (It doesn't hurt because it burns fast and the water keeps it
cool.) Then I'd wave my hands, running around yelling, "FIRE! FIRE!" and
everybody would get all excited. They'd run out of the room, and that was
the end of the show!
Later on I told this story at college to my fraternity brothers and
they said, "Nonsense! You can't do that!"
(I often had this problem of demonstrating to these fellas something
that they didn't believe - like the time we got into an argument as to
whether urine just ran out of you by gravity, and I had to demonstrate that
that wasn't the case by showing them that you can pee standing on your head.
Or the time when somebody claimed that if you took aspirin and Coca-Cola
you'd fall over in a dead faint directly. I told them I thought it was a lot
of baloney, and offered to take aspirin and Coca-Cola together. Then they
got into an argument whether you should have the aspirin before the Coke,
just after the Coke, or mixed in the Coke. So I had six aspirin and three
Cokes, one right after the other. First, I took aspirins and then a Coke,
then we dissolved two aspirins in a Coke and I took that, and then I took a
Coke and two aspirins. Each time the idiots who believed it were standing
around me, waiting to catch me when I fainted. But nothing happened. I do
remember that I didn't sleep very well that night, so I got up and did a lot
of figuring, and worked out some of the formulas for what is called the
Riemann-Zeta function.)
"All right, guys," I said. "Let's go out and get some benzine."
They got the benzine ready, I stuck my hand in the water in the sink
and then into the benzine and lit it... and it hurt like hell! You see, in
the meantime I had grown hairs on the back of my hand, which acted like
wicks and held the benzine in place while it burned, whereas when I had done
it earlier I had no hairs on the back of my hand. After I did the experiment
for my fraternity brothers, I didn't have any hairs on the back of my hands
either.
Well, my pal and I met on the beach, and he told me that he had a
process for metal-plating plastics. I said that was impossible, because
there's no conductivity; you can't attach a wire. But he said he could
metal-plate anything, and I still remember him picking up a peach pit that
was in the sand, and saying he could metal-plate that - trying to impress
me.
What was nice was that he offered me a job at his little company, which
was on the top floor of a building in New York. There were only about four
people in the company. His father was the one who was getting the money
together and was, I think, the "president." He was the "vice-president,"