THE MAKING OF A SCIENTIST 2

2. THE MAKING OF A SCIENTIST
RICHARD FEYNMAN

3. THE MAKING OF THE SCIENTIST
We had the Encyclopaedia Britannica at home. When I was a small boy, he
used to sit me on his lap and read to me from the Britannica. We used be reading,
say, about dinosaurs.
It would be talking about the Tyrannosaurus rex, and it would say something
like,” This dinosaurs is twenty- five feet high and its head is six feet across.”
My father would stop reading and say, “Now, let’s see what they means.
That would mean that if he stood in our front yard,he would be tall enough to put
his head through our window up here.”( We were on the second floor.) “But his
head would be too wide to fit in the window.” Everything he read to me he would
translate as best as he could into some reality.

4. QUESTIONS
1.How did the boy get an idea about the size of
the dinosaur?
2. How did the father’s habit of translating things
into real life experiences help Feynman in his later
life?

5. ANSWERS
1. After reading the details about the
dinosaur, his father translated the details
into reality placing the dinosaur in their
front yard and explained its height in
proportion to the building.
2. He learned from his father to translate
everything he read and figure out what it
really meant.

6. ACTIVITY
Write a conversation between
Feynman and his father.