
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume III - trevyn
http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_toc.html
======
VLM
[http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/29355/reading-
the...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/29355/reading-the-feynman-
lectures-in-2012)

I do not think either of Ron Maimon's comments could be easily improved upon.

This stackexchange has been cleaned up as per the "I deleted some old and/or
off topic comments" if I remember correctly this article used to have some
hilarious deletionist rant about historical physics texts being off topic for
physics SE.

~~~
NamTaf
I agree; his comments really do cover why I am a huge fan of them. Feynman's
lectures are less about the actual physics, and more a tour de force in how he
approaches problem solving and intuition of problems. He just uses physics to
deliver it (and in doing so, gives you an excellent primer to a large amount
of physics topics at a level that an interested party could find accessible).

Having done some tertiary level physics, I've covered much of the content but
I still find the Volumes an excellent read not only as a refresher on the
subject matter but also a demonstration of how to really nut out a problem and
think about it in a way that supports a fuller understanding of the principles
at play.

Feynman lamented that his lectures, in and of themselves, were a failure when
he presented them to the Caltech classes. I think that misses their true worth
of teaching the prospective student how to think through problems. That's a
skill that is incredibly valuable to learn and improve upon no matter what
your level of physics understanding or indeed what discipline you choose to
pursue. To me, the material is largely secondary to that.

~~~
VLM
"intuition of problems"

I have read several of his books, both non fiction and the autobiography.
Would you say intense focus on development of intuition is a Feynman thing or
a physicist thing or a general trait of anyone who masters a topic (not
mutually exclusive). He is the most persuasive author I can think of WRT his
(correct) opinion that development of good intuition results in problem
solving.

~~~
NamTaf
I think it's a teacher thing. All the best teachers I've observed, both in my
life and famous ones, have mastered the teaching of intuition. This is not
limited to physics or even the hard sciences. I'd also say that there's a
causal link between those who can teach material _well_ and those who truly
master a subject matter, so your latter statement is correct.

I've been doing 8.01x and 8.02x on edX - both are taught by Walter Lewin[1]
and I have found him to capture the same principles of understanding
intuitively the material. Indeed, reading the discussion boards of the
subjects I routinely see people laud the homework material for being
challenging but when they finally crack it, experiencing a deeper
understanding of and insight into the fundamental nature of the subject
matter.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lewin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lewin)

------
trevyn
Dear Feynman Lectures Forum Members,

Since the release of the free online edition of FLP Vol. I in September many
of you have written to ask whether we will publish the other two volumes of
FLP online. Many have also asked whether we intend to publish PDF editions of
FLP that can be read offline. In fact we originally planned to publish all
three volumes online when our PDF editions became available, so we could use
the release of the online edition to promote sales of the PDFs, which help
support our activities. However, that plan didn't materialize for two reasons:
(1) the people hired to do the LaTeX->HTML conversion only completed Vol. I,
and (2) our publisher had some technical problems that delayed the publication
of our PDF editions.

Today I am writing today to inform you that I have been working on the
conversion of FLP Vols. II and III into HTML, and I finished Volume III
yesterday, so I have just published it. Please check it out at
www.feynmanlectures.info/flp. You may notice some new behavior in the floating
menu's navigational controls, which now function as follows when the floating
menu appears over a Volume's Table of Contents: the next/last buttons cycle
through the tables of contents of the three volumes, and the "up" button takes
you to the home page of the edition. (When the floating menu appears over a
chapter, the navigational controls function as previously: "next/last" cycle
through the chapters of the volume and "up" takes you to the table of
contents.)

I also wish to inform you that our PDF editions have (finally!) appeared for
sale online; you can now find them listed by our other publications, with
links to retailers, on the Feynman Lectures Website Buy page
(www.feynmanlectures.info/docroot/buy). Please note that while sales of the
printed books benefit Caltech and Basic Books, only sales of electronic
editions benefit 'The eFLP Group' (myself and Rudolf Pfeiffer), creators of
the New Millennium Edition's LaTeX manuscript, who bring you the free online
edition of FLP. So, if you want to help support our efforts, please buy the
PDFs!

Finally, I want to give you a "heads up" to check out the Books & Arts section
in the upcoming December 5th edition of Nature (International weekly journal
of science), where there will be a very nice two-page spread about The Feynman
Lectures on Physics written by Rob Phillips (Fred and Nancy Morris Professor
of Biophysics and Biology at Caltech).

I hope you enjoy FLP Vol. III. It is my personal favorite of the three
volumes! [Regarding Volume II: 10 (out of 52) chapters remain to be converted
to HTML. I'm working on it as time permits, and am not sure how long it will
take to finish -- hopefully not too long.]

Best regards, Mike Gottlieb \--- www.feynmanlectures.info

P.S. Caveat Reader: In converting a large and complex book like FLP from one
format to another, inadvertent errors are inevitably introduced. Moreover, you
are most likely reading the online edition on a platform I don't have (since I
only have 3: an iPad, a PC and a Mac) so you may see things I don't. If you
see anything that looks wrong in the online edition -- suspicious-looking text
or equations, broken links, or other errata -- we would greatly appreciate it
if you would push the "contact us" button on the floating menu, and inform us
of the problem. (For this free online edition, we could not afford to hire
proofreaders. So, you get to be the proofreaders ;->!

P.P.S. Once again the Simple Machines Forum Software's Newsletter Send
function terminated in error, forcing me to re-send this message using gmail.
I apologize if you received multiple copies.

~~~
phaus
I'd love to purchase all three volumes in a way that supports the group
responsible for the free online version, but when its only $20 more expensive
to get a really nice hardcover edition than it is for a set of .PDFs, that's a
really tough sell.

If you gave a discount for purchasing all 3, for around $80, I'd be surprised
if you didn't increase your sales volume enough to make more money than you
would at a higher price.

~~~
VLM
I'm confused at the marketing where someone else paying for the download
bandwidth means it costs quite a substantial sum of money only slightly less
than shipping dead trees around, but a continuously updated live website means
its free. I would expect for financial reasons the prices of the products
would flip.

Expenses are much higher when I read the website than when I read a pdf.

Lets say there was an android app that basically downloaded and cached the
entire website and periodically fetched updates / proofread changes. Basically
a git client with a crude wrapper, assuming you're using git for source
control (or Hg or subversion or whatever). Would I pay $10 for that app? Sure.
I think you'd get lots of sales.

------
oracuk
I'd love to be able to buy MP3s of his lectures for download. I have been
unable to find them online, does anyone here have any pointers?

~~~
stevewilhelm
They were publish in audio CD format some time ago. They are available at the
Santa Clara public library[1].

A subset of the collection is available on CDs from Amazon. [2]

I have found listening to them very interesting. I am just trying to grasp the
concepts, so not being able to see the equations isn't that important to me.

[1] [http://s831.us/1duD3P0](http://s831.us/1duD3P0) [2]
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Very-Best-Feynman-
Lectures/dp/0465...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Very-Best-Feynman-
Lectures/dp/0465099009)

~~~
oracuk
Thanks for this, I finally succumbed to the 20th Century and bought the CD off
of Amazon.co.uk. Just need to dig out a cd player to rip it.

I remain surprised there isn't anyone offering these as paid for MP3
downloads. Seems like the right audience for that.

------
halon
thanks for posting! We still teach out of Volume III in the quantum mechanics
course I assisted, I can recommend the entire volume and great that it is
available to the world.

------
HowardMei
Does anybody know why do particles spin in the first place?

~~~
VLM
I vaguely remember reading that in his book and was inspired to see if
anything has improved since then. My interpretation is "no" nothing has
improved on that very specific front since the 60s.

Note that you'll get plenty of replies about completely different question,
like "does the math work without spin?" and the answer being "no". And some
defeatist commentary (if you've ever heard of the "shut up and calculate"
interpretation of QM...)

It intuitively seems to have something to do with symmetry and the finite
speed of light and maybe dimensionality and the quantization of angular
momentum. I have no intuitive explanation of the peculiar behavior of a spin
1/2 particle as it rotates thru 720 degrees. At least not in three dimensions.

There's been several Nobel prizes for the "what" and "how" and whoever figures
out the "why" will likely get a prize someday.

Traditionally in physics new theories require what starts out as weird math at
the time. So it'll probably come from automata theory or cryptology theory or
whatever rather than yet another real analysis discovery or yet another
statistical analysis.

If you want a spooky smoke and mirrors faith to latch on to, I am a big fan of
"every form of Math ever invented can eventually be applied to Physics, even
if it takes a couple centuries to figure out how". Nothing wrong with having
peculiar faith based ideas as long as they don't interfere with life.

