The end of the story is, he wins the Nobel Prize.

The unexpected part was the twist in the middle of the roller coaster. I’ll let Feynman speak for himself:

“Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing – it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve…

So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.

I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate — 2 to 1. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, ‘Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces of the dynamics, why it's 2 to 1?

I don't remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particle is, and how all the acceleration is balanced to make it come out to 2 to 1.

“I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, ‘Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here are the plate goes around so, and the reason it's 2 to 1 is…’ And I showed him the accelerations.

“He says, ‘Feynman, that's pretty interesting, but what's the importance of it? Why are you doing it?’

“‘Hah!’ I say. ‘There's no importance whatsoever. I'm just doing it for the fun of it.’ His reaction didn't discourage me; I had made up my mind that I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked… And before I knew it it was a very short time I was playing – "‘working,’ really – with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.

It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams in the whole business that I got the Nobel prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.”

The point that struck me was, Feynman’s ultimate breakthrough came as a result of focusing on what he enjoyed — after he allowed himself liberty to “play with physics” again.

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