The Feynman Lectures on Physics

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The Feynman Lectures on Physics including Feynman's Tips on
Physics: The Definitive and Extended Edition (2nd edition,
2005)

Cover of Volumes 1 and 2 of the CD release of The Feynman
Lectures on Physics

The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman, Robert
Leighton, and Matthew
Sands is perhaps Feynman's most accessible technical work[citation
needed] and is considered a classic introduction to modern
physics.[citation
needed] It includes lectures on mathematics, electromagnetism, Newtonian physics, quantum physics, and
even the relation of physics to other sciences. It has three volumes, which were
compiled from material presented in a two-year introductory physics course given
in the early 1960s by Feynman at Caltech. Six readily accessible
chapters were later compiled into a book entitled Six Easy Pieces: Essentials
of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher, and six more in Six
Not So Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry and Space-Time.

The first volume focuses on mechanics, radiation, and heat. The second volume is mainly
on electromagnetism and matter. The third
volume, on quantum mechanics,
shows, for example, how the double-slit
experiment contains the essential features of quantum mechanics.

A best account on the history of these famous volumes is given by one of
their authors, M. Sands, in his memoir article "Capturing the Wisdom of Feynman", Physics Today, Apr
2005, p.49; see also[1]

Contents

1 Background

2 Contents

2.1 Volume 1. Mainly
mechanics, radiation, and heat

2.2 Volume 2. Mainly
electromagnetism and matter

2.3 Volume 3. Quantum
mechanics

3 Abbreviated
editions

3.1 Six Easy Pieces
(1994)

3.2 Six Not-So-Easy Pieces
(1998)

4 Quotations

5 Publishing
information

6 References

7 External links

[edit]
Background

By 1960 Richard Feynman was
already a legend in his own time;[citation
needed] at age 42 his research and discoveries in physics
had resolved a number of troubling inconsistencies in several fundamental
theories. In particular, it was his work in quantum
electrodynamics which would lead to the awarding in 1965 of the Nobel Prize in physics. At
the same time that Feynman was at the pinnacle of his fame, the faculty of the
California Institute of
Technology was concerned about the quality of the introductory courses being
offered to the undergraduate students. It was felt that these were burdened by
an old-fashioned syllabus and that the exciting discoveries of recent years,
many of which had occurred at Caltech, were not being conveyed to the
students.

Thus, it was decided to reconfigure the first physics course offered to
students at Caltech, with the goal being to generate more excitement in the
students. Who better to teach this course than the most famous lecturer of
physics on campus? To the surprise of the Department, Feynman readily agreed to
give the course, though only once. Aware of the fact that this would be a
historic event, Caltech recorded each lecture and took photographs of each
drawing made on the blackboard by Feynman.

Based on the lectures and the tape recordings, a team of physicists and
graduate students put together a manuscript that would become "The Feynman
Lectures on Physics." Although Feynman's most valuable technical contribution to
the field of physics may have been in the field of quantum electrodynamics, the
Feynman Lectures were destined to become his most widely read work.

Today the Feynman Lectures are considered by many[2]
to be the best introductory set of lectures on Physics ever written. Feynman
himself however stated in his original preface that he was "pessimistic" with
regard to the success with which he reached all of his students. The Feynman
lectures were written "to maintain the interest of very enthusiastic and rather
smart students coming out of high schools and into Caltech." Feynman was
targeting the lectures to students who, "at the end of two years of our previous
course, [were] very discouraged because there were really very few grand, new,
modern ideas presented to them." As a result, some physics students find the
lectures more valuable after they obtain a good grasp of physics by studying
more traditional texts. Many professional physicists refer to the lectures at
various points in their careers to refresh their minds with regard to basic
principles.

As the two-year course (1961–63) was still being completed, word of it spread
throughout the physics community. In a special preface to the 1989 edition,
David Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer claim that as time went on, the attendance
of registered students dropped sharply but was matched by a compensating
increase in the number of faculty and graduate students. Sands, in his memoir
accompanying the 2005 edition, contests this claim. Goodstein and Neugebauer
also state that, "it was [Feynman's] peers - scientists, physicists, and
professors - who would be the main beneficiaries of his magnificent achievement,
which was nothing less than to see physics through the fresh and dynamic
perspective of Richard Feynman.", and that his "gift was that he was an
extraordinary teacher of teachers". In the 1980s, Goodstein produced a new set
of freshman physics lectures called The Mechanical
Universe, which in itself is a classic Caltech lecture series which borrows
some of its historically based video scenes from Carl Sagan's Cosmos television
series.

Addison-Wesley published a collection of problems to accompany The Feynman
Lectures on Physics. The problem sets were first used in the 1962-1963
academic year and organized by Robert Leighton. Some of the problems are
sophisticated enough to require understanding of topics as advanced as Kolmogorov's
zero-one law, for example.

Addison-Wesley also released in CD format all the audiotapes of the lectures,
over 103 hours with Richard Feynman, after remastering the sound and clearing
the recordings. For the CD release, the order of the lectures was rearranged
from that of the original texts.

In March 1964 Feynman appeared before the freshman physics class as a guest
lecturer, but the notes for this lecture were lost for a number of years. They
were finally located, restored, and made available as Feynman's
Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun.

In 2005 Michael A. Gottlieb and Ralph Leighton co-authored Feynman's Tips
on Physics, which includes four of Feynman's freshman lectures not included
in the main text (three on problem solving, one on inertial guidance), a memoir
by Matt Sands about the origins of the Feynman Lectures on Physics, and
exercises (with answers) that were assigned to students by Robert Leighton and
Rochus Vogt in recitation sections of the Feynman Lectures course at Caltech.
Also released in 2005, was a "Definitive Edition" of the lectures which includes
corrections to the original text.

[edit]
Contents

[edit]
Volume 1. Mainly mechanics, radiation, and
heat

Preface: "When new ideas came in, I would try either to deduce them if they
were deducible or to explain that it was a new idea ... and which was not
supposed to be provable."
Chapter 1. Atoms in motion
Chapter 2. Basic
Physics
Chapter 3. The relation of physics to other sciences
Chapter 4. Conservation of
energy
Chapter 5. Time and distance
Chapter 6. Probability
Chapter 7.
The theory of gravitation
Chapter 8. Motion
Chapter 9. Newton's laws of
dynamics
Chapter 10. Conservation of
momentum
Chapter 11. Vectors
Chapter
12. Characteristics of force
Chapter 13. Work and potential energy
(A)
Chapter 14. Work and potential energy
(conclusion)
Chapter 15. The special theory of
relativity
Chapter 16. Relativistic energy and momentum
Chapter 17. Space-time
Chapter 18.
Rotation in two dimensions
Chapter 19. Center
of mass; Moment of
inertia
Chapter 20. Rotation in space
Chapter 21. The harmonic oscillator
Chapter
22. Algebra
Chapter 23. Resonance
Chapter 24. Transients
Chapter 25. Linear
systems and review
Chapter 26. Optics: The principle of least
time
Chapter 27. Geometrical
optics
Chapter 28. Electromagnetic radiation
Chapter 29. Interference
Chapter 30.
Diffraction
Chapter 31.
The origin of the refractive
index
Chapter 32. Radiation damping. Light
scattering
Chapter 33. Polarization
Chapter 34.
Relativistic effects in radiation
Chapter 35. Color vision
Chapter 36.
Mechanisms of
seeing
Chapter 37. Quantum
behavior
Chapter 38. The Relation of Wave and particle
viewpoints
Chapter 39. The kinetic theory of gases
Chapter 40. The
principles of statistical
mechanics
Chapter 41. The brownian
movement
Chapter 42. Applications of kinetic theory
Chapter
43. Diffusion
Chapter 44. The
laws of thermodynamics
Chapter 45. Illustrations of thermodynamics
Chapter
46. Ratchet and
pawl
Chapter 47.
Sound. The wave
equation
Chapter 48. Beats
Chapter 49. Modes
Chapter 50. Harmonics
Chapter 51. Waves
Chapter 52. Symmetry in physical laws

[edit]
Volume 2. Mainly electromagnetism and matter

Chapter 1. Electromagnetism
Chapter
2. Differential
calculus of vector fields
Chapter
3. Vector integral
calculus
Chapter 4. Electrostatics
Chapter
5. Application of Gauss' law
Chapter 6.
The electric field in various
circumstances
Chapter 7. The electric field in various circumstances
(continued)
Chapter 8. Electrostatic
energy
Chapter 9. Electricity in the atmosphere
Chapter
10. Dielectrics
Chapter 11.
Inside dielectrics
Chapter 12. Electrostatic analogs
Chapter 13. Magnetostatics
Chapter
14. The magnetic field in various
situations
Chapter 15. The vector
potential
Chapter 16. Induced
currents
Chapter 17. The laws of
induction
Chapter 18. The Maxwell
equations
Chapter 19. The principle of least
action
Chapter 20. Solutions of Maxwell's
equations in free space
Chapter 21.
Solutions of Maxwell's equations with currents and charges
Chapter 22.
AC circuits
Chapter
23. Cavity
resonators
Chapter 24. Waveguides
Chapter 25. Electrodynamics in
relativistic notation
Chapter 26. Lorentz
transformations of the fields
Chapter 27.
Field energy and field momentum
Chapter 28. Electromagnetic
mass
Chapter 29. The motion of charges in electric and magnetic
fields
Chapter 30. The internal geometry of crystals
Chapter 31. Tensors
Chapter 32. Refractive index of
dense materials
Chapter 33. Reflection from
surfaces
Chapter 34. The magnetism of matter
Chapter
35. Paramagnetism and magnetic
resonance
Chapter 36. Ferromagnetism
Chapter
37. Magnetic materials
Chapter 38. Elasticity
Chapter
39. Elastic materials
Chapter 40. The flow of dry water
Chapter 41. The
flow of wet water
Chapter 42. Curved
space

[edit]
Volume 3. Quantum mechanics

Chapter 1. Quantum
behavior
Chapter 2. The relation of wave and particle
viewpoints
Chapter 3. Probability
amplitudes
Chapter 4. Identical particles
Chapter
5. Spin one
Chapter 6. Spin one-half
Chapter 7. The
dependence of amplitudes on
time
Chapter 8. The Hamiltonian
matrix
Chapter 9. The ammonia maser
Chapter 10. Other two-state
systems
Chapter 11. More two-state systems
Chapter 12. The hyperfine splitting
in hydrogen
Chapter 13. Propagation in a crystal
lattice
Chapter 14. Semiconductors
Chapter
15. The independent particle approximation
Chapter 16. The dependence of
amplitudes on position
Chapter 17. Symmetry and conservation
laws
Chapter 18. Angular
momentum
Chapter 19. The hydrogen atom and the periodic table
Chapter
20. Operators
Chapter
21. The Schrödinger
equation in a classical context: a seminar on superconductivity

[edit]
Abbreviated editions

"Six Easy Pieces grew out of the need to bring to as wide an audience
as possible a substantial yet nontechnical physics primer based on the science
of Richard Feynman. . . . General readers are fortunate that Feynman chose to
present certain key topics in largely qualitative terms without formal
mathematics. . . ."

[edit]
Six Easy Pieces (1994)

Chapters

Atoms in motion

Basic Physics

The relation of physics to other sciences

Conservation of
energy

The theory
of gravitation

Quantum behavior

[edit]
Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (1998)

Chapters

Vectors

Symmetry in physical laws

The special theory of
relativity

Relativistic energy and momentum

Space-time

Curved
space

[edit]
Quotations

Feynman once commented, about these three volumes: "[This set of books]
has views which are very close to my own."

[edit]
Publishing information

Feynman R, Leighton R, and Sands M. The Feynman Lectures on Physics
. 3 volumes 1964,
1966. Library of
Congress Catalog Card No. 63-20717

ISBN
0-201-02115-3 (1970 paperback three-volume set)

ISBN
0-201-50064-7 (1989 commemorative hardcover three-volume set)

ISBN
0-8053-9045-6 (2006 the definitive edition (2nd printing); hardcover)

Feynman's Tips On Physics: A Problem-Solving Supplement to the Feynman
Lectures on Physics (hardcover) ISBN
0-8053-9063-4

Six Easy Pieces (hardcover book with original Feynman audio on CDs)
ISBN
0-201-40896-1

Six Easy Pieces (paperback book) ISBN
0-201-40825-2

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (paperback book with original Feynman audio
on CDs) ISBN
0-201-32841-0

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (paperback book) ISBN
0-201-32842-9

Exercises for the Feynman Lectures (paperback book) ISBN
2-356-48789-1 from the Caltech
Bookstore

[edit]
References

^
Welton, T.A., "Memory of Feynman", Physics Today, Feb 2007, p.46.

^
Customer reviews on Amazon.com

[edit]
External links

Official web site with
Feynman's exercise problems and errata

The Douglas Robb
Memorial Lectures Free-to-view videos provided by the Vega Science Trust.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physics"

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