Summary of Playing with Energy

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What we have learned so far is neatly summarized by the excellent Michio Kaku.

When Michio was growing up, he loved science fiction shows and books, filled with time-traveling heroes, parallel universes, and intergalactic space travel. “Magic, fantasy, and science fiction were all a gigantic playground for my imagination. They began a lifelong love of the impossible,” Michio says.

The day Einstein died, Michio’s teachers told his class that the great physicist had died before completing his biggest discovery – a “theory of everything”. Michio was fascinated by this story and the unfinished theory and began going to the library to learn more about Einstein and his work.

Although his family was poor, they whole-heartedly supported Michio’s curiosity, letting him build experiments in the house and taking him to local university libraries. Michio was determined to understand what this incomplete theory was all about.

By the time Michio got to high school, he had a well-established passion for physics. For the science fair, Michio constructed a 2.3eV atom smasher in his garage. This particle accelerator was made of 400 pounds of scrap metal, 22 miles of copper wire, and generated a magnetic field 20,000 times greater than the Earth’s. This ambitious project got him a spot at the National Science Fair. There, it caught nuclear physicist Edward Teller’s attention and earned Michio a full-ride to Harvard University.

“Einstein once said, ‘If a theory cannot be explained to a child, then the theory is probably worthless,” Michio says. “Meaning that great ideas are pictorial. Great ideas can be explained in the language of pictures. Things that you can see and touch, objects that you can visualize in the mind. That is what science is all about, not memorizing facts and figures.”

Art and science are indeed bedfellows.

Michio believes it is a natural drive to understand the universe that makes a true physicist. “People often ask the question: Do I have to be an Einstein to become a physicist? The answer is NO,” Michio says. “Sure, physicists have to be proficient in mathematics, but the main thing is to have that curiosity and drive. One of the greatest physicists of all time, Michael Faraday, started out as a penniless, uneducated apprentice, but he was persistent and creative and then went on to revolutionize modern civilization through the discovery that an electric charge can move along a copper wire.”

Everybody, regardless of background, race, societal challenges, upbringing, schooling, can decide to take control of their life experiences. No skills are necessary. No advantages are available. Three things are necessary:

1. A desire to take charge

2. The curiosity to learn how to

3. The discipline to practice with the knowledge

That is it. Practice with what? With the tools developed from the knowledge you already gained. In the next section you will learn and practice with nine tools.

This is not a one time thing. These are tools for life.

I use them every day.

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