Saturday, June 02, 2007

Feynman Lectures

Here is a link to some lectures on physics by Nobel Winner Richard Feynman. If the chunks are too long for you or you don't have the right video player Lubos Motl has some links to the whole thing segmented in shorter clips.

Feynman is very wise to do what I normally do. When he needs mathematics done he leaves it to mathematicians (which in some cases is Feynman himself). So to get these lectures may be conceptually difficult, however they will not be mathematically difficult. For those of you math challenged, no worries, mate.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi, I`m from Germany and I wonder me what about telling you?
But, it`s interesting to read!
see you later
torsten
Hotel Rothenburger Hof Dresden

Anonymous said...

It is not quite correct to say that Feynman leaves out the mathematics.

It is more that he finds ways of explaining things that don't require the mathematics to set up. It's really entertaining if you already know the mathematics and the normal approach. But if you honestly don't know the mathematics, a lot of things work out only in special cases - which are the ones that he's chosen for illustration. He was a tricky guy!

Ultimately, you need to know the mathematics - even if, as in his case, you sometimes have to invent it.

They used to say that a physicist should read Feynman's lectures three times: as a beginning student, as a graduate student, and as a professor. You get something different at each reading level:
- general concept
- grounding of the specifics
- inspiration towards greater clarity of explanation