Originally Published: September 6, 2013
By Manasa Kaniselvan.
The book QED by Richard Feynman is a fascinating read. In fact, it was the book that first got my interested in science. Why? Because I was nine, and this book explained Quantum Electrodynamics without the use of a single equation. It was a heavily simplified version, of course, and it still used the general concept of vectors, but my nine-year-old self felt very proud of being able to understand it.
There was something enthralling about being able to comprehend the things that were happening on such fundamental scales, and my younger self was drawn in. Of course, physics past basic kinematics isn’t generally taught at the middle-school, so I delved into popular physics books that continued to explain these concepts in ways understandable to the layman, and studied math to be able to understand the basics of the equations needed. I never got very far as a nine-year-old, but it was the enthusiasm and the inspiration that really counted.
Since then, I’ve had a voracious love of learning science. Along with the science courses I took in school and the science books at the library, I discovered the world of online courses and the practice of being an autodidact, in which I learned as much as I could without the presence of an organized syllabus. I was fascinated by brilliant scientists in the past and young inventors alike, and decided that I would study engineering to find ways to apply the knowledge I learned. But I suppose that book is what first inspired me to explore science.
The book QED by Richard Feynman is a fascinating read. In fact, it was the book that first got my interested in science. Why? Because I was nine, and this book explained Quantum Electrodynamics without the use of a single equation. It was a heavily simplified version, of course, and it still used the general concept of vectors, but my nine-year-old self felt very proud of being able to understand it.
There was something enthralling about being able to comprehend the things that were happening on such fundamental scales, and my younger self was drawn in. Of course, physics past basic kinematics isn’t generally taught at the middle-school, so I delved into popular physics books that continued to explain these concepts in ways understandable to the layman, and studied math to be able to understand the basics of the equations needed. I never got very far as a nine-year-old, but it was the enthusiasm and the inspiration that really counted.
Since then, I’ve had a voracious love of learning science. Along with the science courses I took in school and the science books at the library, I discovered the world of online courses and the practice of being an autodidact, in which I learned as much as I could without the presence of an organized syllabus. I was fascinated by brilliant scientists in the past and young inventors alike, and decided that I would study engineering to find ways to apply the knowledge I learned. But I suppose that book is what first inspired me to explore science.
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