(Cheers)

Alright!

I am here to tell you why you guys should forget everything you know,

right now!

So, first thing you guys need to know:

suppose you guys are all doing your homework.

OK, you know, it's something you have to do;

and, you're doing great on your homework,

you are getting great grades, fabulous prizes, such as you know,

Benjamins and all this great stuff.

I'm here to tell you that you're doing it all wrong!

That's right, I did just say that, you're doing it all wrong!

In order to succeed

you have to look at everything with your own unique perspective.

OK, what does that mean?

That means that, when you think,

you must think in your own creative way,

not accepting everything that's already out there.

By the way,

the people I'm showing you in the background are my little brothers Ethan and Wesley,

one of them is a chemist and the other one is a meteorologist.

So, your perspective might be the only way you can see

art or history or music, or whatever.

So, let me show you one of the ways in which I can see math.

So, for example,

that's 32 and the rotations represent:

addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, etc.

My main reason of coming out here

is to do some quantum mechanics, OK?

So, today, what we're gonna do is,

we're gonna do the Schrödinger equation,

split it into time independent components,

and we're gonna solve it for

the boundary conditions of a lattice and a particle in the box.

So, let's get to work!

So, I have some lecture notes, which I'd like you guys to pass out.

I'm gonna split them into two rows.

So, if I can have some people come up and get these?

No, wait. Before you come up here

I need to let you know about something very quickly.

OK, just stay there. I'm kidding!

(Laughter)

I didn't -- (Applause)

I did not come here to frighten you all with quantum mechanics -- not yet.

So, let's think about something simpler.

How many of you here have heard about circles?

OK, good.

So, why are circles important?

They are the shape of cookies.

They are the shape of skateboard wheels,

and most importantly,

they're the shape of the thing that turns on your X-box 360.

(Laughter)

So, what do we know from school about circles?

We know Pi r2, we know they're round.

Do we know anything else?

Not really.

(Laughter)

So, let me tell you something cool you can do with circles.

It's called Johnson's Theorem.

It's not really a theorem, it's just, you know,

a way mathematicians can think of stuff.

So, what Johnson said was,

"You take three circles,

you overlap them in a way so that there's six blue lines" --

where I call each of the circles blue;

so there's six lines coming in one point.

The other three points are in a circle of the same size;

Interesting.

So, this isn't just Pi r2, This is something new.

So because Johnson didn't just think:

"Oh, it's gotta be Pi r2 and round, that's it,"

he created math.

And he did it in his own unique perspective way.

So, now I know not all of you are necessarily mathematically gifted,

so --

(Laughter)

so, let's move on to some more interesting stuff.

By now you might have heard about Isaac Newton in your High School career.

You might have heard about him from prisms

or whatever he might have done.

So, in 1665, Isaac Newton was at the University of Cambridge.

Now, for those of you who really know your history,

at that time Cambridge had closed due to the plague.

So, Isaac Newton, he didn't have a way to learn.

He had to stop learning, and he was probably,

hiding in a dormitory with his cat running from the plague.

Now, while he was doing this he decided he had to stop learning,

but he didn't want to stop thinking.

OK? So, because of that he was thinking about this problem in astrophysics.

And specifically I think he wanted to calculate

the motion of the Moon around the Earth,

so I sort of revamped that problem into the case of Mercury around the Sun.

So, OK.

What he did was, in order to solve this problem he created calculus,

Newton's three laws, the universal law of gravitation,

the reflecting telescope to check his work, and optics,

and all this crazy stuff in that two years that he had stopped learning.

So, I guess that was really good for us,

because at that time Newton had to stop learning;

but when he stopped learning he started thinking and he created science.

And, OK, that's just great, we now have a theory of physics!

So, OK.

He could have probably been some top scholar,

he could have had a 4.0 GPA,

he could have been on the dean's list,

he could have had his professors proud;

but he wouldn't have created anything

if he didn't stop learning.

Newton needed to start thinking,

and think of things out of his own unique perspective,

in order to create his theory.

So, now let me formally introduce myself

because I did not do that at the beginning of the talk.

So, about 11 years ago I was diagnosed with this thing called autism.

What that meant was I was focusing on things in such extreme detail,

that it seemed I wasn't thinking at all.

Basically I'd be like,"Oh, look here's this reflection of that light,

so there's light up here, but, oh, there's my shadow,

so there's a light back there" and I looked over and it's over there.

(Laughter)

OK.

So, because of that, you know,

people thought I would never learn

because it just looked I was just staring into the opening;

it looked like I wasn't doing anything at all.

So, people told me I would never learn, I'd never think,

I'd never talk, I'd never tie my shoes, which --

OK, they might have had a point, you know,

I'm wearing sandals.

So -- (Laughter)

You know, but however, at that age,

I went to the Barnes and Noble, and I got a textbook,

and from the data that was in that textbook I derived Kepler's laws.

When I wasn't supposed to be learning or thinking at all.

So, basically from the other people's point of view

it wasn't really looking too good, I wasn't fingerpainting, or doing story time,

or any of the other stuff the 2-3-4 year olds would do;

but, you know, what they did was, because I --

they took me to special Ed.,

which is extremely special

in the fact that it didn't educate me.

(Laughter)

So, during that time I had to stop learning

because I didn't have a way to learn, you know,

I was just in special Ed.

So what they would do is --

So, I wasn't able to learn anything at all.

However, at that age I started thinking about things

and sort of the way of all of these shadows,

and I think that's why I like astrophysics, and physics, and math today;

because I had to stop learning,

I believe that's why I do what I do today.

OK, so let me continue about gravity.

It's a very exciting topic for those of us who are in physics.

So let me continue.

Now, what happened was,

about a couple of centuries later,

the physicists had enough experimental technology to test Newton's orbit.

Now, Newton predicted that the orbit of Mercury was an oval,

or as scientists like to say "an ellipse."

However, when we pointed our telescopes out, we saw that thing.

For those of you who are scientists you know that's extremely exaggerated, but --

This was not looking good, Newton had failed.

One of the greatest physicists, of all minds, had failed, he failed!

(Laughter)

So, we needed someone else, just like Newton had done,

to forget everything they knew!

And you know, recreate this.

That man's name was Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein, what he would -- he was also --

he was stopped in his tracks, he was not doing very well.

He was Jewish and it was pre-Nazi Germany,

so, he was not able to get a position at the local university.

He had to work at a patent office;

which, OK, that's not theoretical physics, and we're talking about Einstein here.

So, yeah,

what happened was, Einstein, he had all this time to think all of a sudden.

He had to stop learning, but he had all this time to think;

and so, what he had done was,

he liked to have these thought experiments

and liked to think about all these different things.

So what Einstein thought was,

OK, he pictured himself on a trampoline with a couple of friends,

which -- they are actually -- a failure of my sentence there,

and the fact that physicists

that's usually a couple more than they have.

(Laughter)

Albert Einstein was probably on a trampoline with one of his friends,

and you know, they were probably playing some,

I don’t know, tennis or something.

So, however, you know, they are physicists,

they don’t have very good hand to eye coordination,

so they probably didn't, you know,

catch the tennis ball, and it went rolling around them;

and Einstein looked at this and said,

"Without friction, this is gravity!"

He realized, "This is just gravity."

So, afterwards, he predicted the motion

which is gonna end up like that crazy thing;

but that crazy thing is exactly that other crazy thing.

So, Einstein had solved the problem

just by thinking about it in his own unique perspective,

in his own unique way.

He stopped learning, and he started thinking,

and he started creating.

So now let me get back on the story, you know,

I wasn’t really looking too good,

so I just kind of brush it over there.

So, about three years ago, I --

OK, there was a calculus class I wanted to sit in the back of,

so, I decided, in order to sit in the back of this,

I am going to learn: algebra, trigonometry,

all this other middle school stuff,

all the high school math,

and first year undergrad calculus in two weeks,

so I could sit in the back of this class.

I was ten.

(Laughter)

Okay --

So, also at that time, proving this,

I got accepted into the University;

and yet again I was still ten.

So, OK, then I had to go to an entrance interview,

you know, that’s what you gotta do, its a university.

So, I had to go to this entrance interview,

and because of parking, I had all these coins,

and, you know,

I dropped them all over the guy's office;

making him think I had no common sense

and he pretty much held me back for a semester.

So, I also had to stop learning at that time.

OK, what did I do?

Did I stop learning and just, you know, start playing video games and stuff?

No!

I started thinking about shapes!

(Laughter)

And I was thinking about this specific problem in astrophysics

that I was really interested in at that time,

which I still kind of am.

Now, what I did was,