Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Thursday, June 1. 2023

Got a bright kid?

Or some unused brain cells which are eager to be put to use?


Classics: Feynman's Basic Physics Lectures 


Recordings from 1961 are imperfect, but content is worth it. Enthusiastic teacher.


Posted by Bird Dog in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 15:34 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No time to listen?
Try this book "6 Easy Pieces", also Feynman.

(Yes, the title is a play on Nicholson's "Five Easy Pieces")
#1 anon on 2023-06-01 18:33 (Reply)
And then if you want to make your head hurt, read the sequel - Six Not So Easy Pieces. One of the hardest short texts I have ever come across. It reminded me why I switched my major from physics to electrical engineering at freshman orientation.
#1.1 John Fisher on 2023-06-02 08:29 (Reply)
I read that too, with pleasure. There was nothing in it that I hadn't encountered before in undergraduate school, but having Feynman explain it all once again was a thing of beauty.

There are tons of gems in his Lectures, but I've read that the revised edition is the one to get as it fixes dozens of errors and omissions from the original set (which I have). To get the most out of it, you'd be well-advised to have some familiarity with the Laplacian and Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics, but even if not, you'll experience the amazement of watching an extraordinary mind at work. And after reading Chapter 9 of Volume II you'll appreciate thunderstorms in an entirely different way.
#1.2 Hairless Joe on 2023-06-02 10:10 (Reply)
Always interesting, painted my house one year listening to a biography of Richard Feynman. Been interested ever since, made the painting go quicker too.
#2 grant1863 on 2023-06-01 23:00 (Reply)
If you have a budding young science geek in the family, you can jumpstart their physics education with the hardcopy version of Feynman's lectures. They're eminently readable, and easier to understand than most standard physics tests. You can often find a set (3 volumes) in larger used bookstores.

But DO listen to/watch Feynman lecture. The guy sounds more like a plumber than a professor, and that's all to the good.
#3 Mike Anderson (Link) on 2023-06-02 06:14 (Reply)
He had a gift for making things intelligible. Any book by him, from his memoirs to the popularized QED to the three-volume set of physics textbooks, is worth reading.
#4 Texan99 on 2023-06-03 10:01 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.