from The Intellectual Production of Engineers 6.2.3 Sense of Body
- According to the biography of Nobel Prize winner in physics Richard Phillips Feynman (Feynman), when someone said, “The soles of your shoes wear down because of friction with the ground,” Feynman asked, “What is friction?” to which Feynman replied, “What is friction? How would you answer?
- If you can’t answer, then for you “friction” is rootless knowledge, like a cherry branch cut out of a cherry tree. Words can be used as symbols without understanding their meaning. You can test whether you are understanding meaning by seeing if you can explain it without using the word. For example, if you can answer, “The soles of my shoes wear down because the tiny bumps on the ground scrape off the soles,” then the concept of friction is supported by a concrete image.
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