Feynman and His Father

The great physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) is renown among scientists as being a genius. Feynman had lightning insight into how nature works and he was one of the greatest performers of calculations by hand. Nature presents her answers to many physics problems in the form of  integrals and Feynman could evaluate integrals in a few lines using a basket of simplifications and tricks that able physicists and mathematicians could only do in several pages. How is it that such talent is awakened and developed? In his books and his video recordings, now available on YouTube, Feynman indicates how his curiosity was built. It was through conversations with his father. 

Red Shift

One of the most passed on misconceptions in Physics teaching concerns the red shift of electromagnetic waves. Students in science classes are taught about the Doppler effect of sound waves. If a rapidly moving car moves away from us the sound waves that we hear appear to be stretched out and we hear a lower pitch. Students are then taught that when a very rapidly moving luminous object moves away from us the light waves are stretched out and in this case the effect is known as a red shift. However, is the reverse true? If we observe a red shift does it mean that the object making the light waves must be moving away from us?