
Feynman Lectures on Physics now free online - silenteh
http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/
======
ingenter
Feynman lectures on QED:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvl6TBGEoO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvl6TBGEoO0)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjdbbnWsdis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjdbbnWsdis)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF25Lwt73fg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF25Lwt73fg)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtK6FdTg9HU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtK6FdTg9HU)

~~~
danesparza
I have to disable safety mode to watch these? WTF?

~~~
teraflop
I don't know what "safety mode" is, but I didn't need to disable anything to
watch the videos.

~~~
charonn0
It's an optional Youtube setting.

[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/174084?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/174084?hl=en)

------
vanderZwan
Great! This part kind of surprises me though:

> _However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read online,
> and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion
> of The Feynman Lectures on Physics for any purpose._

I know it doesn't actually mean anything in practice, but still, I'm shaking
my head in disbelief that there's still people out there clinging to this
mentality. Aside from the fact that it's fundamentally technically impossible
to read something online without downloading it first.

~~~
0003
So we cannot not scrape this to see how many words are in each chapter, how
the technical vocabulary changes over topics, or perform an analysis on
connected keywords...

~~~
PudgePacket
Well, If you're going on the definition of download as mentioned above you
could write a javascript program to do it and run it on the webpages while
they're still in browser.

------
allegory
Wonderful news but particularly sickening for me as I fished out £130 for the
hardback volumes last year!

Absolutely great books however!

I've learned a lot already from those books.

Also, the "For the Practical Man" (algebra, geometry, trig, arithemtic) series
of books on mathematics that Feynman started his career with. They are hard to
get hold of and expensive but the calculus book is wonderful if incredibly
dense and written in an early 1900's style!

Those, a cheap Casio calculator, a box of pencils and some school exercise
books have taught me more than a university degree and years of industry
experience.

Edit: found a legitimate PDF of "Calculus for the practical man"
[http://physsocyork.co.uk/notes/J.%20E.%20Thopmson--
Calculus%...](http://physsocyork.co.uk/notes/J.%20E.%20Thopmson--
Calculus%20for%20the%20practical%20man.pdf)

~~~
NamTaf
I do not regret buying the hardcover copies for one second. I prefer reading
stuff ilke this on paper - digital makes a good reference for quick checking
of facts but I get a better, deeper understanding of it when I sit down and
read it on paper at a desk.

------
kabdib
I'd love to buy the PDFs, but they're DRMed and I refuse to rent ebooks.

I guess I could buy them and then download the "pirate" versions from
somewhere.

Instead, I'll stick with my hardcopy edition.

------
cjrd
Wow - this is awesome. Anybody interested in helping me map out a dependency
graph of the concepts in the Feynman Lectures?

~~~
adamfeldman
If you did that it'd be super awesome. Maybe something like
[http://www.metacademy.org/about](http://www.metacademy.org/about) but for
physics?

------
k-mcgrady
Is this worth reading for someone without a particular need to understand
physics in depth? What I mean is if I take the time to read these will I learn
anything useful to someone not pursuing a career in physics or related field?

~~~
abecedarius
I don't know about _useful_ \-- physics is not currently as useful to a
programmer as, say, probability theory -- but I'd recommend volume 1 to anyone
ready to follow it, just for the mind-stretching. Volume 2 is longer, harder,
and less different in its approach to its main topic, electromagnetism. Volume
3 is short, unique, and doesn't depend too much on Volume 2 -- I was able to
profit from it without mastering volume 2. (Nowadays there probably are better
intros to quantum mechanics, though. I don't think there was any one really
good intro when I studied it back in the 80s. The most enlightening were
Feynman vol. 3, Dirac's _Principles_ , and another whose authors I've
forgotten.)

Added: There's only one other introductory physics text by a historically
first-rank physicist, and that was Maxwell in the 19th century. (Maybe there
were earlier ones, like Euler's books on mechanics, which I haven't read.
Einstein's _Relativity_ was a popularization like Feynman's _QED_ or _The
Character of Physical Law_ rather than like the Feynman lectures. Newton's
_Principia_ has also been used as an intro text, which seems hilariously
inappropriate.) The lectures are also unusually full of the this-is-how-a-
physicist-thinks thing which is hard to pin down.

------
CountHackulus
Disappointed it's explicitly not for download, but it's still excellent to be
able to have access to all of these.

~~~
hackerboos
Hopefully some talented soul will write a script to convert these HTML files
into mobie, epub and PDF.

~~~
archgoon
From the landing page:

"However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read online,
and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion of
The Feynman Lectures on Physics for any purpose."

~~~
nfoz
They don't know what the word "download" means. This statement is nonsense.

~~~
tzs
"Download", as used in practice on the internet when referring to documents
generally means copying the whole thing to your computer such that it can be
used there without further internet access.

It generally does not include temporary transfer of small parts of the
document for immediate reading, except when the focus of the discussion is
about the underlying mechanics of the transfer.

~~~
nfoz
This supposed duality is nonsense. A change of cache settings in your browser
amounts to the same result. There's no such thing as a "temporary transfer",
and I think we should not entertain the notion.

~~~
AUmrysh
I don't see how it's any different from time-shifting with VHS. In this case,
you're just using a longer-term "temporary" format (epub, mobi, pdf) which
allows you to peruse the website later.

------
rdxm
every now and then i go into the library and read a chapter out of my
hardcover set of these. my kids do the "geeez dad" thing when i make them sit
with me and look at them.

classics.. to be sure....

edit: i almost feel like these shouldn't be something that gets
digitized.....this knowledge and its presentation belongs in a tactile
medium...

~~~
gone35
The plural of anecdote is data, so FWIW I'm exactly the opposite: not just for
textbooks, but even for hardcover _literature_ books I have right there in my
bookshelf, I often end up digging up some PDF or Google Books version
regardless. I guess I miss the scrolling/zooming, plus all the meta-textual,
cross-referencing stuff like having multiple copies of the book in different
sections side by side, easy access to references and definitions, etc.

What one finds 'classical' is highly relative: remember Socrates famously
despised books as a degrading and pernicious medium, for one [1].

[1] [http://wondermark.com/socrates-vs-
writing/](http://wondermark.com/socrates-vs-writing/)

~~~
sabbatic13
Socrates' ideas, or rather Plato's representations thereof, belong to a
cultural context radically different from our own and have absolutely no
relevance. Greece was undergoing a transition from orality to literacy at the
time. It was also in the early stages of actual educational institutions. What
the distribution of a few manuscripts in that context meant relates to nothing
in our modern world.

Not to be a jerk about it, but the misuse of history is characteristic of very
pernicious rhetoric.

~~~
Retric
Books are clearly worse in virtually every context than one on one dialog with
the author.

The advantage of contact with people separated in space or time seem less
meaningful at the time. But, venerating books over one on one contact is a
huge mistake.

~~~
jonahx
> Books are clearly worse in virtually every context than one on one dialog
> with the author.

This is not the case with fiction or poetry, where what is communicated is
often precisely what cannot be communicated socially or even explicitly. The
experiences of both writing and reading are often in a different realm
altogether than those of speaking and listening face to face -- one is not a
watered down version of the other. They have different qualities.

And even in the case of scientific and mathematical exposition, where your
statement is more often true, there are many exceptions. For example, I think
of professors I've had who could write lucidly but were poor teachers, both in
the classroom and in office hours. Either their social skills stood in the way
of their communication, or their verbal skills were not as good as their
written ones. They needed time and solitude to express their thoughts clearly.

~~~
Retric
People can recite books just fine, let alone poetry. Granted, it's something
of a lost skill, but one on one interactions are not limited to dialogs even
if they may enhance exposition.

So, you gain absolutely nothing by writing the spoken word down as a skilled
orator can speak with a nuteral tone when desired but the written word can't
add inflection.

~~~
eru
Sometimes deliberate ambiguity is part of the art. (Also, on a more practical
level, books are better at random access.)

------
leephillips
These books show more than anything else why Feynman is so revered among
physicists as a teacher. An introductory course in physics, simple yet
demanding, and shot through with Feynman's unique approach and personality.

~~~
judk
Feynman actually found that the lectures kind of flopped as a semesters
courses. It was too intense, IIRC.

~~~
NamTaf
That's correct. Having said that, they're a fantastic refresher for someone
who has studied all of this at the high school / university level and wants to
get a crash course. Feynmann loved his technical crash courses and these
lectures show that he has a mastery of distilling out all of the details and
leaving none of the chaff.

------
paulvs
Just chapter 1 contains answers to many questions that I've had on the back of
my mind.. Why does water ice expand when it melts? If water ice is a
crystalline structure, how can it vary in temperature (e.g. -5 degrees to -10
degrees). A very good read.

~~~
yequalsx
Perhaps you misspoke or I'm not understanding correctly what you mean but from
the book:

"Another thing we can see from Fig. 1–4 is why ice shrinks when it melts. The
particular crystal pattern of ice shown here has many “holes” in it, as does
the true ice structure. When the organization breaks down, these holes can be
occupied by molecules. Most simple substances, with the exception of water and
type metal, expand upon melting, because the atoms are closely packed in the
solid crystal and upon melting need more room to jiggle around, but an open
structure collapses, as in the case of water."

~~~
paulvs
I misspoke, I meant shrinks.. thanks for the heads up.

------
gourneau
Project Tuva has a great series of lectures Feynman gave around that time
[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/)

~~~
metaobject
Silverlight only. Too bad MS cares more about pushing their proprietary
technology than sharing important historical / educational material.

------
foobarqux
How does this compare to Susskind's "The Theoretical Minimum"?

~~~
DennisP
Susskind's is much shorter and goes into very little detail. It's really
intended to give you a foundation for learning physics, while Feynmann's is
meant to teach you lots of physics.

~~~
bkcooper
The Feynman lectures certainly will teach you a lot, but I think it would be a
fairly trying textbook for learning a lot of the material for the first time.
Among other things, a very serious deficiency for self-education is a complete
lack of problems to work (which just reflects that these really were
lectures).

~~~
DennisP
What would you recommend for self-education?

~~~
bkcooper
That's a tough question. One of the most appealing things about the Feynman
lectures is the breadth and how self-contained it is. I don't think there are
really good analogues for that. The closest thing I can think of is one of the
monster first-year physics tomes like Halliday and Resnick. That will teach
you much of the basics (large chunks of Vol. 1 and 2 of the Feynman lectures),
has huge numbers of problems, but it is of course less fun. It is also
probably comparably or more expensive.

Going much further than that gets tricky, because you will usually need more
development in math in concert with the physics. The omnibus "engineering
mathematics" type books will cover a lot of it but I don't really like them.
Boas's _Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences_ would be something I
would look at. For more detailed looks at electromagnetism and quantum
mechanics, I (and many others I know) really liked David Griffiths's
textbooks. The Feynman lectures make an excellent supplement to these for the
different perspective and interesting physical insights.

------
madengr
Don't forget the audio is out there too!

~~~
Shizka
Is it actually possible to learn this through audio? With equations and so
forth I would imagine it being rather hard. Do you have any experience with
it?

~~~
madengr
Yes I have the audio. No, it is no substitute for the book. The audio is of
the lectures. The books are based on the lectures. It's just nice to have the
audio to go along so you can hear his personality.

~~~
Shizka
Yeah I could see how that would be beneficial. And I guess that it could work
for repetition as well. Where did you get the audio?

~~~
madengr
Well, the first rule of * is you do not talk about *.

------
jayvanguard
It is awesome how while the page is loading you see stuff like this:

"Now if we multiply Eq. (41.19) by [math], [math]. We want the time average of
[math], so let us take the average of the whole equation, and study the three
terms. Now what about [math] times the force?"

Soo... am I going to need math skills to understand this stuff?

~~~
TylerE
Yes. Calculus was basically invented to solve physics problems.

~~~
gamesbrainiac
Honestly, I feel that Calc should be taught way earlier, the way that physics
is taught in school feels rather incomplete. I mean without calculus, is quite
difficult to understand physics.

------
nirai
An offline version of the website is still floating around the Internet space.

------
rodrigoavie
Thanks for the material. Anyone working towards translating the material?

------
dominotw
Has anyone completed all of the 3 parts? How much time did it take you ?

~~~
acomar
It's generally a three semester to a full two year sequence at most
universities. You can of course go faster or slower depending on your own
capacity to self-study and learn, but most bright people will probably fall
somewhere in that spread to get a solid grasp of the total contents.

That said, it's always helpful at first to skim through and get a surface
understanding of the whole picture before you dive in and try to understand it
all. You can probably complete a surface scan like that in a few weeks or
months. I studied these becomes along with my high school physics course and
completed the books in about a year, but I was spending double the usual
amount of time on this stuff. As a high school student, I didn't have anything
better to do, but as an adult I'd expect it to take me two dedicated years.

------
3rd3
One of the rare cases of "internet done right".

------
josealicarte
Great lecture, this very useful :) to all fresher

