science

What Do You Care What Other People Think?

What Do You Care What Other People Think? is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand What Do You Care What Other People Think? rather than just read about it. In short: "What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. Released in 1988, the book covers several instances in Feynman's life and was prepared from recorded audio conversations that he had with Ralph Leighton, his close friend and drumming partner.

Key takeaways

What Do You Care What Other People Think? belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect What Do You Care What Other People Think? to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of What Do You Care What Other People Think? from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

"What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. Released in 1988, the book covers several instances in Feynman's life and was prepared from recorded audio conversations that he had with Ralph Leighton, his close friend and drumming partner. It follows the same format established in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, published in 1985.

Overview The book was prepared as Feynman struggled with liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer from which he died in February 1988. The book is the last of his autobiographical works. The first section presents a series of humorous stories from different periods of his life, while the second chronicles his involvement on the Rogers Commission investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In one chapter, he describes an impromptu experiment in which he showed how the O-rings in the shuttle's rocket boosters could have failed due to cold temperatures on the morning of the launch. Later, this failure was determined to be the primary cause of the shuttle's destruction. Feynman's comments on the reliability of the shuttle, published as an appendix to the Rogers Commission's final report, are included. The second section of the book was dramatized in a television movie by BBC/Science Channel titled The Challenger Disaster. The book is much more loosely organized than the earlier Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! It contains short stories, letters, photographs, and a few of the sketches that Feynman created in later life when he had learned to draw from an artist friend, Jirayr Zorthian. The titular story of the book focuses on Feynman's first wife, Arline, who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis before their marriage. Its title is taken from a question she often put to him when he seemed preoccupied with the opinions of his colleagues about his work, thereby echoing his own earlier words to her. She died while Feynman was working on the Manhattan Project. The book concludes with a chapter titled "The Value of Science", an address Feynman gave at the 1955 autumn meeting of the National Academy of Sciences.

Reception BYTE said "The book makes excellent reading both for its entertaining style and for Feynman's keen insights".

Editions Feynman, Richard P., What Do You Care What Other People Think?, 1988, W. W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-02659-0, 2001 paperback: ISBN 0-393-32092-8

See also Richard Feynman; § Challenger disaster

References

External links Quotations related to Richard Feynman. What Do You Care What Other People Think? at Wikiquote

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with What Do You Care What Other People Think?

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what What Do You Care What Other People Think? claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to What Do You Care What Other People Think? before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about What Do You Care What Other People Think? ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of What Do You Care What Other People Think?

In research: What Do You Care What Other People Think? appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses What Do You Care What Other People Think? in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: What Do You Care What Other People Think? is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1988 non-fiction books, Autobiographies, Autobiographies adapted into films, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for What Do You Care What Other People Think? outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “What Do You Care What Other People Think?” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study What Do You Care What Other People Think? in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what What Do You Care What Other People Think? means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain What Do You Care What Other People Think? out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is What Do You Care What Other People Think? in simple terms?

Why does What Do You Care What Other People Think? matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study What Do You Care What Other People Think??

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on What Do You Care What Other People Think?.