What I found really interesting was how Feynman, a physicist, found himself working in computer science and engineering roles at TMC – and was able to apply his physics background to solve problems in new and unusual ways. When I went into physics, I was told that there weren’t many jobs in my field of study. To some extent, that is true. But there are many fields where physics knowledge comes in particularly handy, and can actually give you an edge, as Feynman showed back in 1983.

By the end of that summer of 1983, Richard had completed his analysis of the behavior of the router, and much to our surprise and amusement, he presented his answer in the form of a set of partial differential equations. To a physicist this may seem natural, but to a computer designer, treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system is a bit strange. Feynman’s router equations were in terms of variables representing continuous quantities such as “the average number of 1 bits in a message address.” I was much more accustomed to seeing analysis in terms of inductive proof and case analysis than taking the derivative of “the number of 1′s” with respect to time. Our discrete analysis said we needed seven buffers per chip; Feynman’s equations suggested that we only needed five.

Just for the heck of it, I filled out their application and submitted a video response. Apparently prizes are to be had.

Update: I’m amazed that someone actually thought I was seriously applying to the “project” (it’s April 1st, of course I’m not taking it seriously)

I’ve been dealing with a lot of broken systems and software this morning. On days like this, I find myself missing physics. You know something isn’t right when you’ve decided to install OpenBSD in VMware for “fun”.