The first time I thumbed through the pages of The Feynman Lectures on Physics was when I was doing research in structural engineering, by that time pretty much divorced from the nitty-gritties of physics. I had outgrown all that stuff, I thought. I was quickly disabused of that notion.
That notion, remnants of the same, took a more severe beating recently. Only yesterday I finished reading an extract from the original, Six Not So Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry and Space-Time. That is, I read the extract nearly 30 years after casually perusing the original! This time, I was a little less casual. I want to share with readers how I felt as I was reading the book.
I have done enough vector algebra and calculus but the first lecture in the book showed me that I had used vector analysis without understanding it. A vector is much more than the conventional definition, like it has both a magnitude and a direction. It is much, much more. It makes your life easy. Vectors enable you to move things freely from here to there, to spin them without a care! That was a surprise, after having dreaded vectors for decades!
Feynman had claimed light is a particle, no wave-particle duality for him. He also claimed that every phenomenon can be explained by considering light as particle. OK, I had taken this at his word, till I read this book. In it, we understand Doppler Effect not in terms of waves and the time intervals between successive crests (or troughs) of light waves from a moving source hitting the observer, but in terms of light being a particle!
Understand, Feynman is not making a crude claim that light is a particle. He said that the phenomenon can be explained if we consider light as a particle. Not for him the airy-fairy question of what is light. Light is what light does!
While admiring Einstein, his bold forays (who does not?), Feynman sets the stage that Einstein climbed on to. The historical development he presents in the book – only as a side-winder – is like piercing a banana with a pin; just so easy and smooth. In the process, he shows up to what stage Einstein’s’ predecessors took the subject and where they stopped, only for it to be taken further by the bold genius of Einstein. You learn the subject while also appreciating the personalities. One chapter, on Special Theory of Relativity is all about Lorentz Transformation, with Einstein making a mere cameo appearance!
At the beginning of another chapter, he seems to go off on a tangent, directed at philosophers. I knew Feynman did not suffer philosophers, but here he really bores into them, and it is not merely scientific vanity driving him. He brings up the point that philosophers did not understand relativity beyond their analytic, tautological statements and they were literally clueless. The irony is, scientists went beyond philosophers and proved through experiments – again beyond the ken of philosophers – the opposite of what the scientists themselves had conjectured! The honesty of the enterprise of science is evidenced in stark relief here.
His brief mention of simultaneity – things happening at the same time – is clarity personified. He takes apart the claims of astrologers. In a physics class! Basically, he is saying that even as the astrologer is predicting what you will be ten years down the line, both he (the astrologer) and you, indeed all of us, may have less than 8 minutes to live, because the sun had blown up, unbeknownst to us! A very comforting thought!
Basically, I enjoyed the book immensely. But, a sobering thought. This lecture was given to first and second year students at the California Institute of Technology, which has the well-deserved reputation for admitting students only on merit.
Contrast that with the following: After finishing high school (in my case, it was the Pre University Class of Madras University), I scraped through IITJEE and entered Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
We fancy IITs as fully merit-based. And, I can tell you that I did well by myself NOT reading the original The Feynman Lectures on Physics and was contented to study for exams, relying on Sears and Zemansky, Resnik and Halliday or books of that level, of that rigor, of that convention. Even after 41 years since studying physics, that I can understand only some extracts from Feynman Lectures attests to the correctness of my approach in my IIT days.
That brought the issue clear to me, a 58 year old – even as much a product of an IIT that I am (did my M.Tech at IIT, Kanpur, to boot!), I am not all that meritorious. This Richard Feynman taught me through his lectures directed at students of PHY 101, most unintentionally, I am sure. That is the mark of a great teacher.
Raghuram Ekambaram
That notion, remnants of the same, took a more severe beating recently. Only yesterday I finished reading an extract from the original, Six Not So Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry and Space-Time. That is, I read the extract nearly 30 years after casually perusing the original! This time, I was a little less casual. I want to share with readers how I felt as I was reading the book.
I have done enough vector algebra and calculus but the first lecture in the book showed me that I had used vector analysis without understanding it. A vector is much more than the conventional definition, like it has both a magnitude and a direction. It is much, much more. It makes your life easy. Vectors enable you to move things freely from here to there, to spin them without a care! That was a surprise, after having dreaded vectors for decades!
Feynman had claimed light is a particle, no wave-particle duality for him. He also claimed that every phenomenon can be explained by considering light as particle. OK, I had taken this at his word, till I read this book. In it, we understand Doppler Effect not in terms of waves and the time intervals between successive crests (or troughs) of light waves from a moving source hitting the observer, but in terms of light being a particle!
Understand, Feynman is not making a crude claim that light is a particle. He said that the phenomenon can be explained if we consider light as a particle. Not for him the airy-fairy question of what is light. Light is what light does!
While admiring Einstein, his bold forays (who does not?), Feynman sets the stage that Einstein climbed on to. The historical development he presents in the book – only as a side-winder – is like piercing a banana with a pin; just so easy and smooth. In the process, he shows up to what stage Einstein’s’ predecessors took the subject and where they stopped, only for it to be taken further by the bold genius of Einstein. You learn the subject while also appreciating the personalities. One chapter, on Special Theory of Relativity is all about Lorentz Transformation, with Einstein making a mere cameo appearance!
At the beginning of another chapter, he seems to go off on a tangent, directed at philosophers. I knew Feynman did not suffer philosophers, but here he really bores into them, and it is not merely scientific vanity driving him. He brings up the point that philosophers did not understand relativity beyond their analytic, tautological statements and they were literally clueless. The irony is, scientists went beyond philosophers and proved through experiments – again beyond the ken of philosophers – the opposite of what the scientists themselves had conjectured! The honesty of the enterprise of science is evidenced in stark relief here.
His brief mention of simultaneity – things happening at the same time – is clarity personified. He takes apart the claims of astrologers. In a physics class! Basically, he is saying that even as the astrologer is predicting what you will be ten years down the line, both he (the astrologer) and you, indeed all of us, may have less than 8 minutes to live, because the sun had blown up, unbeknownst to us! A very comforting thought!
Basically, I enjoyed the book immensely. But, a sobering thought. This lecture was given to first and second year students at the California Institute of Technology, which has the well-deserved reputation for admitting students only on merit.
Contrast that with the following: After finishing high school (in my case, it was the Pre University Class of Madras University), I scraped through IITJEE and entered Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
We fancy IITs as fully merit-based. And, I can tell you that I did well by myself NOT reading the original The Feynman Lectures on Physics and was contented to study for exams, relying on Sears and Zemansky, Resnik and Halliday or books of that level, of that rigor, of that convention. Even after 41 years since studying physics, that I can understand only some extracts from Feynman Lectures attests to the correctness of my approach in my IIT days.
That brought the issue clear to me, a 58 year old – even as much a product of an IIT that I am (did my M.Tech at IIT, Kanpur, to boot!), I am not all that meritorious. This Richard Feynman taught me through his lectures directed at students of PHY 101, most unintentionally, I am sure. That is the mark of a great teacher.
Raghuram Ekambaram
