etter off, the target or the shooter? what's gonna happen to that guy when he fires-- whomp--he gonna walk around the rest of his life like this. one of his eagle's gone, right? rockets. first day i was here talking to you guys, i said, "how does a rocket move?" remember, we all get in the swimming pool together? and we get in the pool, and i push against the edge of the pool, and i rocketed across the pool, right? and i said, "is that how a rocket works?" and you guys said, "yup. sure is, hewitt, sure is." and i said, "nope, it ain't." and he says, "oh, what's going on?" let's talk about that now. how does a rocket move? what makes a rocket go to the moon? does it push against the launching pad so hard that it bounces up and just keeps going, going, going, going? like throwing a ball against-- super ball against the ground and have it bounce to the moon? is that how a rocket works? what pushes on a rocket, gang?

the gas or something. it's like this gun. that gun is being pushed the opposite to the direction the bullet's going, yeah? if i took that gun and i held it down like this and i fired it, would the gun kick up? and after it fires one bullet, i fired another one, would it kick twice? let's suppose i have a machine gun, honey. and i put that machine gun on like a piece of piano wire. see the piano wire stretched tight here? see? see it's nice and tight. okay. twang. now i put that machine gun on a couple of screw eyes, okay? and i take the machine gun, and i pull the trigger. brr-brr-brr! what could happen to the machine gun? can you guys see it climbing up? it's gonna recoil away from the bullets it fires. the gun pushes the bullet down. the bullet pushes the gun up. now, a rocket fires bullets, too. made out of lead? no, molecules of gas. - fires them fast or slow? - fast. with a lot of force or a little force? a lot of force. so those gas particles are fired up. they're pushed out, right? so the rocket pushes the gas down.

you guys can finish it up. now you know how a rocket get to the moon. see, people used to think that the rocket pushes against the air. in fact, the father of rocketry, robert goddard, said back in the twenties, "hey, gang, the time is coming when the human race "will get to the moon with rockets. not airplanes, rockets." and he was belittled, and he was humiliated by the press. and one press person says, "dr. goddard obviously doesn't know his science. "because if he studies books, he'll find out "that between here and the moon is a vacuum, "and there's no air for the rocket to push against. so a rocket could never travel in a vacuum." and that's what they said. what do you guys think about that? can a rocket travel in a vacuum? yes. you know a rocket can travel in a vacuum, 'cause this is what? this is almost the year 2000. so it's the times. but back then, you know, 80 years ago, 70, 80 years ago, people didn't know about these things so much. it wasn't part of the general consciousness. in fact, goddard did this for the press. he did the following experiment.

he put a pistol inside a vacuum chamber, and he pulled the vacuum. ch-ch-ch-chug! so there's no air in there. dropped a little feather, fall just as fast as anything else. a vacuum in there. then what he did is he had a little mechanism whereby he could pull a little trigger outside, little stick would come out and pull the trigger of the gun. and he showed that when the bullet went down, the gun went...and he says, "that's how a rocket works." the bullet doesn't need any air to push against to make the gun go back up. it's straight, straight newtonian physics. rocket pushes down on gas, gas pushes up on rocket. there you are, and you can go all to the moon if-- all the way to the moon if you keep pushing. a little story goes with that. you know, human beings went to the moon, 1969. before 1969, they were talking about going to the moon. my brother had a dear friend, perry hunter,

sort of like a scientific-type guy. and perry hunter and my brother used to get in arguments about this whole apollo mission, as to whether or not humans could get to the moon. and i remember, one time, overhearing an argument between my brother dave and perry hunter. and perry hunter was claiming, "no way, no way a human being is gonna get in a rocket "and get to the moon and come back. "no way. it's all press. it's all a farce. it's all hollywood. they can't do that." and my brother says, "perry, how do you know they can't do that?" and perry said, "because i'm a marksman. "and i know what it is to take a riffle "and get 200 yards away from a target, and boom, "hit that target dead on. i know what that is. "and when you talk about going 240,000 miles away, "i don't care what kind of high tech they got, "they're not gonna aim that rocket properly. they're gonna miss."

perry didn't understand at all how it happens. gang, they don't aim a rocket to the moon and fire and hope they aimed it right and it hits. that's not the way it happens. how does a rocket go to the moon? they could never do that without high-speed computers. they fire the rocket in the general direction of the moon. whooosh! now, as the rocket's going out, the rocket sights on the stars, sights on the moon, sights around and answers the following question: "where am i?" the rocket can ask that question and answer it. then the rocket says, "what's the best way from here "to the moon from where i am, not where i was? from where i am, what's the best path?" that path is calculated. little rocket pushes out on that particular course. then it go whooosh! a little while later, boom. rocket--"where am i?" okay? "what's the best possible way to get to the moon given where i am?" then, plots a whole new path.

it isn't like this one path and if it gets off the course, it tries to get back on. it doesn't do that. it plots a new path all the time. keep getting closer and closer, closer, plot new paths and follow those new paths, whoop, boom, bull's-eye. that's how they do it. so if you're ever, in life, going from one place to another, you say, "i wanna go to here." you get off the path. you don't have to get back on the path. what do you do? you say, "hey, what's the path, the best path from where i am, "not where i was back then when i was 16 or 17 or 18 or whatever like that." so you go by steps. you plot a new path all the time. you take a piece of paper. the piece of paper, you say to the heavyweight champion of the world, "hey, champ, do me something, i give you a million dollars." he'll say "what?" "hit this piece of paper with 50 pounds of force." is he gonna collect the million dollar?

get the heavyweight champ of the world to throw his best right hand. hit that paper. hit that paper with 50 pounds of force, get a million dollars. can he do it? can he? can it be done? no. you can't hit that paper with 50 pounds of force. you know why? you can't get that kind of interaction with that little dinky piece of paper. you can't get it. this paper is not capable of giving you a 50-pound interaction. you can't hit this paper any harder than the paper hit back on you. so you can't do it. that's what gandhi was talking about. you can't be pushed any harder than you push back. can't do it. now, take the paper and hold it against the wall. boom. can you get 50 pounds on the paper? oh, yeah, you'll get 50 pounds on the paper, okay? because what you're doing, you're pushing it against the wall now. and the wall can push back with you 50 and squash the paper--50, huh? but just on itself, you can't do. ain't that neat? so what are we illustrating here? that you can't exert a force on something else unless that force exerts the same amount back on you.

ain't that neat? newton's third law, gang. yay, you got it? here's a horse pulling a cart. and on the cart is a farmer over here. okay. farmer's yelling at the horse, and this cart's all loaded up with bags of bananas or something the farmer is gonna bring to town, okay? and now, what the farmer says to the horse is, "horse, pull the cart. i wanna go to town." and the horse says, "wait a minute. "no sense me pulling on the cart. "because if i pull on the cart, the cart's gonna pull on me. "and if i pull hard, the cart will pull back hard. "and however hard the force i exert over here, "there be an equal opposite force pulling back this way. "the forces will cancel out,

so we might as well just stay here." the farmer said, "no. pull, pull, pull. i guarantee, if you pull, we'll go to town." and the horse said, "but i don't see it. "every action, there's a reaction. how are we gonna get to town?" how does the system move, gang? it's true that for every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction. why don't they cancel out and nothing happens? think about that. it'll make for a good weekend, all right? okay, physics. physics. [music]

paul hewitt here, a few words. you know who we are and what we're about has a lot to do with the influences in our life, the people who have influenced us. and i, like everyone, have had many, many influences. and i just wanna cite, oh, very few, just three or four here. i know when i was in high school, there was a counselor, edward gibbs, high school counselor, and he advised me to not take any academic subjects because i wouldn't need to, because he was aware of my talent for art. i was the guy that would paint the posters for the dances, make the cartoons in the yearbook and that kind of thing. and so he said i wouldn't have to take academic courses, so i took his advice and i didn't. and so in high school, i took no physics, no science. i did mathematics for boys in the freshman year,

and there was a general science course and i thought it was wonderful. but that's about it for that. and another one of my influences was kenny isaacs. kenny isaacs was a local boxing hero. and i was one of these kids that was getting beat up all the time by bullies. i wasn't much of a physical specimen. and kenny isaacs was-- he was the fighter of fighters. everyone admired that guy. i remember going to lynn and watching him fight sometimes. i was about maybe 14 years old, 13, 14, and saying, "wow, this guy is so great." i wish i could be there in his corner, be sort of the kid that comes up with the water bucket, you know, and helps him. this is a gladiator, no one beat him up. but anyway, kenny isaacs was a big influence because, to make a long story short, three years later, kenny isaacs was in my corner. and a fellow lived next door to me, eddie mccarthy, who was a professional fighter, 135-pound, lightweight, very good guy. and he took me under his wing.

but then he went off to the korean war. just before he did that, he turned me over to a local boxing hero, kenny isaacs. and he told kenny, "kenny, take young paul here under your wing. he's my protege." kenny did that. and i was gonna retire as soon as i won the flyweight championship of north america, but i never got that far. i got up to the silver medal for the aau in new england at the age of 17. and that was about it. after that, in the follow-up fight, getting ready for the nationals, i got knocked out, the end of that career. another big influence on my life was burl grey, a sign painter that i met back in the late fifties. burl was painting in miami and i was assigned to paint with him. no one else would paint with him because there was a rumor going around about him that he was, yeah, one of them. he was accused of being, and i found out for myself that old burl was an intellectual.

and intellectuals didn't cut it at the sign painting circuit. anyway, burl grey influenced me a lot. he's the one that lit my fire to get into science. and many of the ideas i had about things were-- burl sort of demolished. he was a very philosophical type and he was a nontheist. and he, you know, convinced me that things were so much simpler if you took a more scientific view of the world and there's so much that we're taught to believe or that we come to believe that simply isn't true. and how does one determine what's true or not? do you find out when you're an old person ready to die that everything you've been doing is just junk? well, you know, we each need a knowledge filter, sort of, to tell the difference between what's true and what isn't true. and burl convinced me that the best knowledge filter ever invented is science. and so i got into science. i went to school. i went to college, lowell tech in massachusetts,

after doing a year of prep school 'cause i didn't take the recommended courses in high school, i had to do this, you know, make up for deficiencies. so burl was a big influence of mine. and then i went through it and i got a physics degree. and while getting that physics degree, it was very, very difficult for me. but there was a book i read when i was in graduate school in the summertime. it was wonderful. it was a book called "basic physics" by ken ford. and ken ford became my mentor and another big influence on me. and ken ford's book, awesome. he told it like it is. ken ford is a giant himself. he doesn't have a nobel prize but his friends do. he's one of those type guys. he was the exec officer of the american institute of physics. i'm proud to say now, i'm very proud of him to have him for a personal friend. so he was a great influence on me. and now i find myself, my greatest satisfaction is to realize that i myself am an influence for other people.

i'm sort of a kenny isaacs or a burl grey or a ken ford to many students. and this many is with a capital m, thanks to the efforts of my friend marshall alenstein who has put together these videotapes a these dvds that spread my lectures from the classroom into the classrooms of many people. and so, it's wonderful being that role model for other teachers and students. and whatever i can do to be a burl grey to other people, to let them see that perhaps a very good foundation for, hey, what's going on in the world, certainly, is science. so let's hear it for physics. physics first, it's a wonderful way to look at the world. it makes sense out of what ordinarily might be just too cplex to understand. physics, i love it. i hope you do too.

welcome to another session of beliefs and believers. we had a great class last time, looking at the religion process. and also, we just left talking about the seeker style of religion, and that's a great leaping off point for us for looking at religious experience, which is what we're going to do in this class. but first, i know you had a lot of questions and a lot of interesting comments, and i'm particularly interested in your feedback on the religion process, how you see it holding forth. you haven't had a lot of time to think about it, but any questions or comments you'd like to make? >> before self-consciousness in man, isn't there something more primal,