radcliffe-2 domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home1/tollopa/public_html/colin-adams.com/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131As I wrote here earlier, I originally intended the It Does What? portion of this blog to be an electronic version of a Leonardo da Vinci inspired notebook. That is, it was intended to be an excuse for me to learn how various trinkets in the real world work, e.g. a doorknob, and to convey what I learned here. Unfortunately, digitizing a notebook is more work than I had originally thought but that’s not the biggest issue I’m having when it comes to writing these type of posts. My biggest issue is that the explanation market is saturated with quality YouTube channels and other websites that are dedicated to it. While inspiring to watch, these videos also discouraged me from posting here for quite some time as I felt like I could not compete. And that’s the topic for this post: explanations.
Let’s step back and let’s start over. One of the original topics I planned on discussing here was a car differential. I originally became interested in understanding how a differential works during the first or second year of high school after watching a video of Richard Feynman explain how a train is able to turn on the tracks. Before answering how a train is able to turn, he throws in this off-handed comment of :
“People all know this about their automobile: when you go around a corner, the outside wheels have to go further than the inside wheels. If the wheels were connected on a solid shaft, you couldn’t turn the outside wheels further than the inside wheels. And so the shaft is broken in the middle with a gear system which is called a differential.”
Well, this made me feel sort of stupid because I’m just a member of this weird, dumb Millenial/Gen-Z transitional generation that doesn’t know much about anything of consequence and I had no idea what a differential was much less how one worked. That feeling of ignorance stuck with me for a few years. At some point later on in high school, I wanted that feeling to go away so I ordered a book to learn about cars and I watched some videos as I read the book and I feel I learned a great deal about cars, especially compared to where I started. But it wasn’t until The Algorithm found me until I felt like I truly understood how a differential worked.
I’m a bit ashamed to admit to myself how much YouTube I currently watch. There’s a lot of good content out there (and much more garbage) and YouTube’s black box of an algorithm seems to have become more addicting for me and many, many other people out there. For instance, an old video that has been on YouTube since 2009 was suddenly and inexplicably recommended for me to watch in August 2019. It’s title: Around the Corner—How Differential Steering Works (1937). Naturally, I clicked.
Once I got past the strange minute-or-so of motorcycles, I proceeded to watch the best explanation of how a differential works that I have seen to date. So, I thanked The Algorithm and continued on with my exciting life.
Except I didn’t. The video and its clear explanation stayed with me, even bugged me. How could it be that a video that was made more than eighty years ago could do such a better job of explaining differentials to me than a modern book or video? And so I got this idea that older, ‘back-in-my-day’ explanations—whether it be from a book or video—may have been better. For instance, I first learned about tensors (mathematical objects often used in physics) from John F. Nye’s original 1957 edition of Physical Properties of Crystals; to this day, I am still grateful for its clear and concise explanations of what tensors are and how they are used to describe physical characteristics. His book was much more useful to me than anything I found online at the time and I still reference it when I need a refresher.
This video and my previous experiences led my selection bias to construct a thesis for myself: explanations published before computers tended to be better because the author was forced to be more careful initially with her words. Correcting mistakes took longer when ink, paper, and film were involved rather than just bits and bytes. Their analog-ness gave them a double-edged sword: it required significantly more effort to initially spread the information into the world while—because it was a longer-term project—more time and effort was invested into it overall. At least, that’s what I believed and I still largely believe it. Even now, I’ll look for older books when I first try to learn a new topic. But at the same time, I see a video by 3Blue1Brown like this:
and I realize that’s not true at all. Older does not inherently mean better. A good explanation always requires a lot of effort and care, which seems obvious but is not often practiced. The only reason people still talk about old textbooks and papers is that they contained good explanations originally and so they’re still around. Classics are classics for a reason—the adage goes—because they earned it. But that doesn’t make them better than anything out there today.
And so a good explanation goes beyond whether someone is a good writer or not; it’s more a matter of effort—an effort, first, to understand and then to a concentrated, dedicated effort to be clear for your intended audience. Further, this discussion is also a good reminder to take the effort to think about and take care with your words, regardless of whether you’re explaining anything or not. Whether we like to admit it or not, our words and our word matter more than we think. Also, be careful with those pesky things we sign—those can sometimes be important too.
A few months ago, I got the idea of making a notebook that explains how various things in the world around me work; the notebook was vaguely inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks: that is, well illustrated, well articulated, and clarifying. However, da Vinci’s notebooks were for his original inventions where this notebook is more so I could glean some practical knowledge about how the modern world works, more or less.
At some point early during my senior year of college, I mentioned this notebook idea to my girlfriend and she said that she was interested in helping out too. So we came up with a system: we each assign each other something that we want to know more about. Because I’m a coward who is afraid of change, she would start. Her task: explain to me how a doorknob works. It’s something I’ve interacted with for the majority of my life, yet I don’t really understand how one works on a piece-by-piece basis.
After she has adequately explained to me how one works, it would be my turn and then we would go back and forth until we got sick of it. Unfortunately, we never got around to it during the actual school year. But, better late than never, I suppose. This website page is supposed to be a more fleshed out version of the notebook, i.e. more written explanations accompanying the diagrams.
I hope you enjoy reading about some of these day-to-day objects, and learn a thing or two along the way.