electrodynamics

He won his Nobel prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics.

Then there's the Dirac equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it the whole business that I got the Nobel prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

So, you start with classical mechanics and electrodynamics, solving lots of grueling differential equations at every step.

One of the things I love about it is that it starts with Maxwell's equations, in their non-simplified form, then goes into the special cases of electrostatics, magnetostatics, and then uniting them into electrodynamics.

Assuming that it was an interview for an electrical engineering position, the Intel question "Explain quantum electrodynamics in two minutes, starting now" doesn't seem at all ridiculous.

Every idea can't be curing cancer, and many innovative ideas are stumbled on while playing with something else - like Feynman discovering quantum electrodynamics because he was curious about why spinning plates wobble.

Cellular automata violate continuity and isotropy, which means they're inconsistent with the continuous spatial formalism used in special relativity, general relativity, classical electrodynamics, and as far as I know, quantum electrodynamics.