He put an o-ring in ice water, and demonstrated vividly why the space shuttle Challenger had been lost ( Read more... )

On the morning of February 11th, 1986, at a meeting of the Presidential Commission investigating the loss of space shuttle Challenger in Washington DC, Professor Richard P. Feynman obtained a piece of o-ring that had been provided to the commission by Morton-Thiokol, the makers of the solid rocket boosters used to launch the shuttle. Compressing ( Read more... )