Imagine an undergraduate physics major, a sophomore. Someone who has always done well
at everything, someone with grand ideals and long hair. Imagine that this person is suddenly finding
himself failing--at everything--including physics, which he loves, and love, which he has come
to feel suspicious of. Imagine how this affects the confidence of a person, how he doesn't sleep at night,
how he can't finish his meals, how he walks off the soccer field, in disgust, unable to focus enough to
even prevent his own injury. Imagine this person sitting in a full lecture-hall, absolutely captivated by a
quiet voice, with a perpetual half-smirk which reminds the person of something, which makes him always
feel as though he is in the presence of...something. Imagine that half-smirk presenting the best lecture
of their career. It is about the mathematical description of a drop of water. How the surface tension holds the
whole together, and how random fluctuations in the shape of the drop can be suddenly amplified, reinforcing
themselves, until the drop is no longer spherical. In fact it becomes so stretched, so pinched in the center
as to form almost two separate spheres, and then there is a snap, and there are two separate
spheres. Imagine the half-smirk revealing, in that quiet voice, that this description is also useful when examining
the structure of the nucleus of an atom. Imagine forty heads nodding in appreciation of the connection,
leaning in, because it is here, in tying together apparently unrelated phenomena, that physics is so
beautiful, and so magical. Imagine the quiet voice then showing how this model can be used to predict
the stability of each of the elements in the periodic table, and even the relative abundance of each. Imagine
that even the long-haired individual, the one who doesn't sleep, understands perfectly. Imagine how
wonderful that makes him feel, how powerful, as though the lecture is meant for him, how intoxicating it is
to follow the graceful equations on the chalkboard and feel as though nature has been revealed, and to feel,
at last, as though he is part of this magical quest toward understanding.
Now imagine that the half-smirking face asks for the lights to be turned out, and he leaves the room for
a moment to arrange the slide projector, and he comes back in, and silently projects black and white
photographs of the New Mexico desert, that blinding light, and then Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
Imagine how that felt, imagine the tears in the eyes of the long-haired fellow, the dreadful silence in the
room. Imagine how magical, and wonderful, and powerful it can be to understand the connections
between things which previously seemed unrelated.