Part 2: A Different Box of Tools Summary and Analysis

While Feynman is studying at Princeton, the physics and mathematics departments have tea together every afternoon at four o'clock. During the teas, students from the two departments discuss topics of interest to both physicists and mathematicians (such as the topology of an orange) although they often view the topic in distinctly different ways.

Although he likes to argue with them and give them a hard time, Feynman befriends many of the math students. They teach him a lot about mathematics, and he is surprised to discover there are things he is able to teach them about math as well. He credits this to the unconventional way in which he learned calculus—he was self-taught from a book his high school physics teacher gave him. The book taught him some obscure...