Customer Reviews

The Feynman Lectures on Physics (3 Volume Set) (Set v)

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I took my sophomore-level physics class in college in the mid-60's, my professor put these Feynman books on reserve in the library. Eventually, looking for anything that could help me with a difficult course, I went into the library to see what Mr. Feynman (of whom I had never heard) had to say.

I was spellbound. It was unimaginable to me that a subject so full of technical detail, formulas and equations, could be brought to life so brilliantly and vividly.

I soon changed my major to math, and I never heard or thought of Richard Feynman again until the Challenger disaster about 20 years later. When President Reagan appointed Feynman to the investigating panel, I said, "Hey! That's the guy who wrote those wonderful Physics books!"

Since then I have learned a lot more about Richard Feynman, and I guess I could say that if I have a hero, he's it. I have also gone back to look at these incomparable physics books again, and they are at least as magnificent as I thought they were in 1966. After decades of reading math and science books, I still believe this set of three books is head and shoulders above ANY textbook that I have seen in ANY subject. (Although, as others have said, it isn't really a textbook. On the other hand, after reading these books, you are likely to ask, "Who the hell needs a texbook?")

Feynman manages to cover the technical and mechanical details of his subject while at the same time conveying a deep and philosophical understanding of the way the physical world works. He shines a dazzling and penetrating floodlight on a subject which is murky to all but the most talented among us.

No praise is too high or too exaggerated for this work. It is one of the great achievements in the history of scientific writing.

First, on the question of whether the original lectures were a failure. In the April 2005 issue of Physics Today, Matthew Sands writes about the project that resulted in the Feynman Lectures. He disputes the claim that the undergraduates drifted away from Feynman's lectures in large numbers, and explains how Feynman's preface came about, and why he (Sands) finds it unduly negative.

It has always been widely agreed that the Lectures are insufficient as a standalone textbook, and best used as supplemental reading. As can be seen from the reviews here, Feynman's approach appeals to many readers, but falls flat with others. This is not surprising, as different people respond to different ways of explaining physics. As an historical aside, Feynman and Schwinger took such different approaches to developing quantum electrodynamics theory that it wasn't immediately clear that their formulations were even equivalent. Most physicists find Feynman's approach easier to learn, but others find it unsatisfying. People are different. Physicists are different. Even physics students are different. There is not, and will never be, one book that is the best for every reader. The Feynman Lectures are great because they have been so enlightening to so many people, not because they meet the impossible standard of being clear to every reader.

I hold the opinion that Richard Feynman was the best physics teacher of all times. I keep his three red volumes always at the main position of my bookshelves, aside Dirac's "Principles of Quantum Mechanics" and the Landau-Lifshitz collection. What is it that puts them in a class apart from every other introductory text? A Nobel-prize winner, Giaever, I think, said that he seldom had to reach for other book of physics than Feynman's. On the other hand, the very respected mathematician Gian Carlo Rota gave it a bad review, orienting students to go instead to Halliday-Resnick for help. Perhaps these opposite opinions give us a clue: Feynman's "Lectures" are the sole book to present basic physics as a living subject, as real physics, that thing that researchers slowly build in their day-to-day toil.For the author, as always, strived to rebuild everything almost from scratch, sometimes with great originality. This explains why we never grow tired of it. It explains too why it "lacks" the organization of a text designed solely by pedagogical purposes. It's an asset, rather than a liability. If you are a beginner, use both (Feynman and Halliday-Resnick). In Feynman you'll see the magic and understand the beauty of a career in physics, as in nowhere else.

Most of the reviewers are right, even the ones that contradict; something Feynman would appreciate.

The books bespeak the Beauty of Physics. Feynman's enthusiasm and
creativity comes through. The wonder and joy of physics is there.
For this alone the books are rightly appreciated. I have the set on my bookshelf and do go back to read it from time to time.

The dark side can be shown by Feynman himself in Volume 3. Regarding the lectures, he says "...I think the system is a failure." It seemed to only reach the brightest students and the ones with the best physics backgrounds. He quotes Gibbons: "The
power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous." In short,
the lectures do NOT make a great text.

I was an undergraduate at Caltech starting in 1970, and the first two years of physics used these books as text. There was a book of problems accompanying the lectures, but the connection was slight. The majority of us had a hard time. Beauty is one thing, but solving problems is another. It took years of grinding through Schaum's and other books to gain an understanding of physics sufficient for a Ph.D., which I now actually have.

So that's how I view these books. They are must-have books, but it is difficult to use them as a text. (Volume 3, the Quantum
Mechanics one comes the closest, I must confess.)

I love these books. I read them when I was a graduate student in mathematics as part of my transition from pure to applied mathematics. I had no background in physics at all, and these books were a very good way to get introduced to the subject. Feynman is one of those people that sees things in a way that is almost magical to everyone else, and he was a masterful teacher.

That said, these are real physics books, so don't bother if you are looking for a superficial understanding. If you already know physics you can probably breeze through the books pretty easily getting a lot of nice insights, but otherwise you need to be prepared to work hard. Also, as a self-teaching tool, these books are incomplete, since they contain no problems, and actually don't prepare you very well to do problems (unless, perhaps, you are as smart as Feynman). For that you probably need a more conventional physics text. I used "Theoretical Physics" by Georg Joos, which is available from Dover (and can be ordered here) because it has lots of problems with complete solutions in the back of the book, but there are many other good, more pedestrian, physics texts to supplement FLP.

If what you want is something lighter, I highly recommend "The Character of Physical Law". You'll learn something and it won't hurt so much. (I also recommend that you see the movies if you possibly can. He was amazing in front of an audience.)

I have a M.S. in Meteorology and am currently back in grad school on course for a M.S. in Physics. I wish Mr. Feynman was still alive so I could thank him for all the help these books have given me. I still refer to them even in my graduate study of physics.

This series of books explains a lot of basic physics and some not so basic physics very clearly and in an entertaining way.

By far the best aspect, however, and an amazing accomplishment for any physics book, is the explanation of the mathematics it contains. In previous physics classes and books I have managed to learn the mechanics of the mathematics, sometimes with difficulty. After I read these books I understood the math! I mean I knew what the equations meant and the implications of the theorems... I REALLY understood and it was easy to also understand why physics and mathematics are beautiful! Thank you, Mr. Feynman!

Feynman's famous three-volume set is an edited set based on his lectures to the introductory physics classes at Caltech, which are widely considered to be among the best lecture series ever published. Feynman takes a different approach from the typical introductory physics textbook. His point of departure perhaps assumes a higher level of mathematical sophistication than most introductory or survey texts. Also, his choice of topics is not as broad and comprehensive as many modern surveys of introductory physics. What makes Feynman's work remarkable is the his manner of explaining physical principles underlying a topic, instead of simply presenting the traditional expression of a rule and its formal mathematical expression. When one completes reading a section of Feynman's lecture, if one has the mathematical sophistication one will obtain a "feel" for how the topic fits in the broad context of physics as a whole. As a note of caution: most introductory physics surveys do not present material with use of matrix mathematics. Feynman assumes familiarity with the basics of matrix algebra, and this fact makes his presentation challenging to many students. In various sources I have read that his lectures were well attended by students in the upper division portion of their education and many graduate students and faculty, while the freshman audience intended may have been poor. That reflects the series as being a high-level conceptual overview reflecting the unified structure of physics. Perhaps not suitable for introductory physics instruction to any but the most advanced students.

I just finished high school having done well in physics AP's. I am now reading through the feynman lectures (about a third of a way through volume 1). I think they are great if you already have some knowledge of essential mechanics problem solving. Certainly his section on probability and introduction to the heisenberg uncertainty principle is absolutely original and fascinating. Also the book is fun to read.
Importantly, Feynman is unpretentious in stating physical principles. He states Newton's 2nd law in its original form as it should be by deriving it from momentum considerations. Many introductory texts will simply state the second law and then prove it later or not at all the way Newton intended.
Another thing about these books: They set the goal as the truth. Most textbooks will simply define things like gravitation in a sort of standard way so that it can be learned as simply as possible. Most textbooks make the error of considering the absolute truth as a hindrance to learning. Feynman is great because when he shows diagrams of a box with some atoms in it he mentions the fact that the world is 3-d and most of the time you wouldn't see atoms of that particular type in the classroom in a diagram of that size.
THese books are great because even though they stray from the real world as all abstract texts do, Feynman revisits the real world and applies his abstractions to it in a common sense way. THe humor of the paradox of not knowing the essential truths of life yet knowing all these complex formulas is always wandering about this book. Feynman tries to connect these beautiful and true abstract concepts to the beautiful and yet totally non-abstract concepts of human life: Like a walk in the park.!

You have to disregard it all, Feynman used to say, to come to the subject with a fresh mind. Therefore, explaining the physics in a very personal fashion, Feynman does in his lectures the straight converse of what he thought was good to understand the physics: to never let somebody else tell you what it's all about, to create it by yourself. The best books for studying physics following Feynman's principles are really those with little material, full of equations without phenomenological explanations.

What is the real value of these books is not the physics you can learn from them. They are not textbooks, but edited lectures. That's quite of a difference. The real value is a certain conception of how-to-do-the-physics, a daring impudence towards mathematics, put away as a tool, a try-and-see spirit, an exhortation to never mind what's the regular way, a philosophy to imagine and feel before to compute and understand, a humility to put nature first, man after. It's a book to cheer oneself's up, when the equations are all empty to you and you think you're a dope; then read a chapter or two from Feynman, he will tell you it's where all the fun is.

Feynman's three-volume textbook should probably not be the only book about physics that you will ever read. But it is certainly among the highly recommended ones.

Feynman was an original thinker - his thinking was always "different". On the other hand, his thinking was also very ordinary, in a sense. He was a very good teacher. He could always understand what is the "natural" conclusion that most of people make about a question, and he could identify where this thinking goes wrong. This is where he focused his teaching energy.

This book contains less equations than most other technical textbooks about the subject. This feature may have some disadvantages, but it certainly has advantages, too. You really need words, not just equations, if you want to explain why some common interpretations of the formalism are misleading, and Feynman does so at many places.

Feynman uses the power of jokes - for example when he defines the concept of a velocity. (Well, the feminists are probably not too happy about this joke, but they are probably not among the readers of this book anyway.) The book also carries another message: about the very basic principles of science as such. What does it mean that a scientific theory is successful? He makes it clear that the physical description of our Universe is one of the main parts of the real culture of our era - and he also humiliates most philosophers.

Even though this was not the main textbook that taught me physics, I still remember several Feynman's points that were important for me - such as his explanations of resonance. But the most remarkable is Feynman's approach to quantum mechanics. Feynman himself is the originator of the "sum over histories" approach to quantum mechanics. But of course, it is not the (only) approach that he wants to explain in the book.

Nevertheless his approach to teaching quantum mechanics is unusual, too. He does not really start with the wavefunctions of a particle moving on the line, which is what a typical textbook does. Instead, he studies several systems with two-dimensional Hilbert spaces. It is an extremely useful approach for the reader to understand the interpretational issues of quantum mechanics.

What do I mean? The wavefunction is not a classical wave, even though it may look so. It is a mathematical object that encodes the probabilities, and the finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces make it more transparent. His examples also make it more obvious that different bases in the same Hilbert space (and different operators) can be equally important and natural, and should be treated democratically. Finally, he also explains the errors of the original reasoning of Einstein (and Podolsky and Rosen) when he suggested that quantum mechanics led to "paradoxes".

Other textbooks often lead the readers to believe that the position operator is special after all, and various deterministic interpretations of the wave function (such as de Broglie's and Bohm's theory of the pilot wave) can be valid - and it is exactly the position of the particle that should also have a "classical" value. Feynman was among those who understood quantum mechanics properly and he chose the right strategy to explain it.

The interpretation of quantum mechanics is not a subject that we teach too carefully, and the students (and not just students) sometimes do not know what is the "canonical" answer. Even though Feynman was a really original physicist, he leads the reader to understand the "orthodox" version of quantum mechanics.