HD Feynman: FUN TO IMAGINE complete (with optional Chinese subtitles)

Here it is in better quality, the whole thing, and with subtitles: this video Particularly good parts are the explanation of fire and trees ("trees come out of the air"): this video and the explanation of the mirror problem, i.e. how does a mirror know to reverse left and right but not up and down: this video

In more general terms - not just applying to children but to anyone - I call these "Feynman lies": the kind of lies you have to tell so as not to drown the receiver into very deep technical details. In essence this means presenting a model of the world that is sort of fundamentally incorrect, but one that is useful in allowing one's to wrap their head around the ideas. "All models are wrong, but some are useful", yadda yadda. "meet where they are" is a really nice way to put it, although it can be tricky to not paint ourselves in a "like rubber bands" corner! > I can't explain [magnetic] attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example, if we’d said the magnets attract like as if they were connected by rubber bands, I would be cheating you. Because they're not connected by rubber bands, I shouldn’t be in trouble, you’d soon ask me about the nature of the bands… and secondly if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces, which are the very things that I'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain, so I have cheated very badly, you see. > [...] > But I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else that you're more familiar with, because I don’t understand them in terms of anything else that you are more familiar with. direct link: this video but the whole chapter is worth a watch: this video

My understanding of it is somewhat similar, although I'd argue that's where our mental imagery breaks down: the "weight on fabric" metaphor works to a point then stops conveying what's really happening and becomes misleading. I think of it like "magnets as rubber bands", and what I call "Feynman lies": > I can't explain [magnetic] attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example, if we’d said the magnets attract like as if they were connected by rubber bands, I would be cheating you. Because they're not connected by rubber bands, I shouldn’t be in trouble, you’d soon ask me about the nature of the bands… and secondly if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces, which are the very things that I'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain, so I have cheated very badly, you see. > [...] > But I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else that you're more familiar with, because I don’t understand them in terms of anything else that you are more familiar with. direct link: this video but the whole chapter is worth a watch: this video