Richard Feynman Gets Jazzed Explaining How Rubber Bands Work

Back in 1983, the BBC aired Fun to Imag­ine, a tele­vi­sion series host­ed by Richard Feyn­man that used physics to explain how the every­day world works. Here, in lan­guage that makes sense to any­one with a basic ground­ing in sci­ence, the Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist answered ques­tions like, Why can’t ten­nis balls bounce for­ev­er? What are we real­ly see­ing when we look in the mir­ror? And, as shown above, why are rub­ber bands stretchy? The clip comes from Fun to Imag­ine, and thanks to this ded­i­cat­ed BBC web­site, you can watch online all six videos in the series, each run­ning about 12 min­utes. (If you have any dif­fi­cul­ty view­ing them at the BBC, sim­ply watch the all-in-one video below.) But beware, Feyn­man’s enthu­si­asm for sci­ence is con­ta­gious. So watch the clips at your own risk, and be pre­pared to start play­ing with boun­cy, stretchy things dur­ing your free time, hope­ful­ly with a big smile on your face.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Feynman’s Let­ter to His Depart­ed Wife: “You, Dead, Are So Much Bet­ter Than Any­one Else Alive” (1946)

Richard Feyn­man Presents Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics for the Non­Sci­en­tist

The Famous Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics: The New Online Edi­tion (in HTML5)

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Lec­ture Series at Cor­nell, 1964