Adam Savage: How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries
Adam Savage is an internationally renowned television producer, host and public speaker. Full bio
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about owning a brain
no control over the things
the facts and the stories.
why you're interested in them,
was a young boy in Queens,
and his wagon and a ball.
the ball went to the back of the wagon.
the ball go to the back of the wagon?"
And his dad said, "Ah.
going to the back of the wagon."
the Challenger disaster,
the Nobel Prize in Physics
the movement of subatomic particles.
with his father as giving him a sense
you out to the edge of human knowledge,
at the great Library of Alexandria,
as the librarian,
which was south of Alexandria.
that stuck in Eratosthenes' mind,
when he looked down this deep well,
that his head was blocking the sun.
that Christopher Columbus
is spherical is total bull.
understood that the world was spherical
with a simple observation.
the Earth's shadow on the Moon,
creates a circular shadow
this letter with this fact.
was directly above the city of Swenet,
it was a straight line
right past the guy's head up to the sun.
in the ground in Alexandria
and the same day, at noon,
that it was 7.2 degrees off-axis.
and you have two points on it,
between those two points,
of a round number,
of this story too,
so we'll continue with it.
between Swenet and Alexandria,
was good at geography.
was a road of commerce,
how long it took to get there.
so he knew very precisely
the two cities was 500 miles.
of the actual diameter of the Earth.
are looking for the Higgs boson.
than the speed of light,
are made possible
in the last few decades.
our eyes and our ears and our minds.
an experimental physicist in Paris.
and confirming other people's results,
like a bit of an also-ran,
that cannot be independently corroborated.
with Galileo's experiments
whether or not light had a speed.
really wonderful experiment
each one of them was holding a lamp.
and his assistant would open his.
and they did the same thing,
that if light had a discernible speed,
coming back from his assistant's lamp.
of magnitude when he assumed
as fast as the speed of sound.
two experimental stations,
trivial piece of equipment.
the clicker for a second
your brains in this.
and it's got a bunch of teeth.
to sending discrete pulses of light.
through this notch at a mirror,
is bouncing off the mirror
as he spins the wheel faster.
like a door is starting to close
that's coming back to his eye.
of light is not coming back
and he fully occludes the light.
between the two stations
and the number of notches in the wheel,
to within two percent of its actual value.
going about science.
understanding a concept,
the people that discovered that concept.
they came to understand it.
were thinking about
they are not so different from us.
We all start with the same tools.
of science are called fields of study.
as a closed, black box,
just thought a little bit harder
and they were a little bit more curious.
people thought about the world,
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Adam Savage - Maker, critical thinkerAdam Savage is an internationally renowned television producer, host and public speaker.
Why you should listen
Adam Savage's mother is a psychologist; his father was a celebrated artist, painter and filmmaker. From the youngest age they encouraged his flights of fancy. Savage has been a paperboy, a projectionist, juggler, unicycle rider, sculptor, graphic designer, scenic painter, robot builder, welder, carpenter, machinist, prop maker, toy designer, actor, writer, executive producer and director. He spent six years in theater and 10 years in commercial and film special effects working for clients such as Nike, Corning, Hershey's, and Coca-Cola, and films like Star Wars, The Matrix films, A.I., Space Cowboys, Terminator 3 and Galaxy Quest.
Savage has built everything from theater sets to miniature particle accelerators. From spaceships to animatronic arms. He's made Rube Goldberg machines, hand props and spacesuits. His online videos have generated over 230 million page views. He's written for Popular Mechanics, the Wall Street Journal and Wired Magazine, among others. His program "Mythbusters" produced 270 episodes that aired in over 100 countries for 14 years. Adam shares his builds, his love for movie props and costumes, and passion for the transformative power of making on his award winning website Tested.com. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Julia, his twin boys Thing1 and Thing2, and two amazing dogs.
(Photo: Michael Shindler)
Adam Savage | Speaker | TED.com