Learn about “QED” a play about physicist Richard Feynman, to teach science and engineering to people through performance art
Using QED, a play about physicist Richard Feynman, to teach science and engineering.
Courtesy of Northwestern University (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
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Transcript
ACTOR AS RICHARD FEYNMAN: Oh, yeah. You bet I'm a pain in the [MUTED]. Hey, that's my contribution. That's why I like working with you. You do so many things wrong that I can point out to you that are wrong.
MATTHEW GRAYSON: So the program is called ETOPIA, which is short for engineering, transdisciplinary, outreach project in the arts, which is a mouthful. It starts with engineering and it ends with the arts. And what we're trying to do is bring people in to the McCormick School of Engineering and use theater or performance art to teach them about science and engineering.
And this year, it's going to be QED, which is a play about the physicist Richard Feynman.
LAURIE BROWN: QED stands for quantum electrodynamics. And that was the field which he worked in, for which he got the Nobel Prize. I was one of his first graduate students. I think I was the first one to actually get a Ph.D. from him.
ACTOR: Great. Richard Feynman. Hello, good day.
GRAYSON: Richard Feynman was a physicist. The play talks a lot about many other aspects of his life. He was a very rich, eccentric, energetic person who was a really good storyteller, told lots of good jokes and lots of good stories. The entire structure of the play is made out of some of his published stories and biographical sketches and things. So his words are almost all taken from things that he said or from stories that were written down that he said.
So the play very much is Richard Feynman in his own words talking about his very unique, strange, exotic, fun, and adventurous life as a physicist. One of the reasons that it's very fitting that this play be performed here at Northwestern is that Richard Feynman was one of the people who identified nanotechnology as an up and coming field. This was in 1959. No one had even thought of this before.
So Feynman's famous speech in 1959 where he said, there's plenty of room at the bottom, described all sorts of new possibilities in the world of the small. And those possibilities are being done here at Northwestern. The play is sponsored by the International Institute for Nanotechnology and the Materials Research Center.
BROWN: I read the show and I think it's an excellent job of telling the public what really what they ought to know about. And I think it's something people would enjoy because he was an enjoyable character, but also we learned a great deal.
GRAYSON: It's a great play. It's a very personal portrait of Richard Feynman. And it really helps for people to come here and see who physicists, who scientists, who engineers really are, what makes them tick. And people think that sometimes scientists and engineers are cold and calculating, but actually we're just very warm and calculating.
MATTHEW GRAYSON: So the program is called ETOPIA, which is short for engineering, transdisciplinary, outreach project in the arts, which is a mouthful. It starts with engineering and it ends with the arts. And what we're trying to do is bring people in to the McCormick School of Engineering and use theater or performance art to teach them about science and engineering.
And this year, it's going to be QED, which is a play about the physicist Richard Feynman.
LAURIE BROWN: QED stands for quantum electrodynamics. And that was the field which he worked in, for which he got the Nobel Prize. I was one of his first graduate students. I think I was the first one to actually get a Ph.D. from him.
ACTOR: Great. Richard Feynman. Hello, good day.
GRAYSON: Richard Feynman was a physicist. The play talks a lot about many other aspects of his life. He was a very rich, eccentric, energetic person who was a really good storyteller, told lots of good jokes and lots of good stories. The entire structure of the play is made out of some of his published stories and biographical sketches and things. So his words are almost all taken from things that he said or from stories that were written down that he said.
So the play very much is Richard Feynman in his own words talking about his very unique, strange, exotic, fun, and adventurous life as a physicist. One of the reasons that it's very fitting that this play be performed here at Northwestern is that Richard Feynman was one of the people who identified nanotechnology as an up and coming field. This was in 1959. No one had even thought of this before.
So Feynman's famous speech in 1959 where he said, there's plenty of room at the bottom, described all sorts of new possibilities in the world of the small. And those possibilities are being done here at Northwestern. The play is sponsored by the International Institute for Nanotechnology and the Materials Research Center.
BROWN: I read the show and I think it's an excellent job of telling the public what really what they ought to know about. And I think it's something people would enjoy because he was an enjoyable character, but also we learned a great deal.
GRAYSON: It's a great play. It's a very personal portrait of Richard Feynman. And it really helps for people to come here and see who physicists, who scientists, who engineers really are, what makes them tick. And people think that sometimes scientists and engineers are cold and calculating, but actually we're just very warm and calculating.
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