5 ms·
Feynman Lectures on Physics now free online
- CountHackulus 12y agoDisappointed it's explicitly not for download, but it's still excellent to be able to have access to all of these.
- thisjepisje 12y agoIf you're reading it "on line" you've already downloaded it.
- coffeeaddicted 12y agoYeah, but you can't put it easily on your tablet and read it offline while sitting in the park ;-) Still liking it a lot.
- bachmeier 12y agoThat's what I was wondering about. You'd be saving the lectures, not downloading them, if you did that. The license needs some clarity.
- nfoz 12y ago"Saving" vs. "Downloading" is not a duality we should entertain either. If it is downloaded, it is likely saved to a permanent storage, and maaaybe some process will eventually delete it. In any case this should not be the territory for law.
- thisjepisje 12y agoWhy don't they want it anyway?
- hackerboos 12y agoHopefully some talented soul will write a script to convert these HTML files into mobie, epub and PDF.
- tim333 12y agopdf. Not sure how kosher the copyright is All 3 volumes: http://selfdefinition.org/science/25-greatest-science-books-of-all-time/20.%20Feynman%20et%20al.%20-%20The%20Feynman%20Lectures%20on%20Physics%20Volumes%201%20-%203%20(1963).pdf http://selfdefinition.org/science/25-greatest-science-books-...
- slacka 12y agoThat's a terrible quality pdf. For $14.99 you can purchase the enhanced version here: http://www.basicfeynman.com/enhanced.html http://www.basicfeynman.com/enhanced.html It was very cool of the publishers to allow this, and they deserve our support. Otherwise, if you must download the basic version, go to the piratebay and search for "Feynman Lectures on Physics (epub,mobi,html) - FIXED"
- kqr2 12y agoPlease note that this is only a small subset of his lectures. They are the "Six Easy Pieces". SIX EASY PIECES, taken from these famous Lectures on Physics, includes the most approachable material from the series
- tim333 12y agoThe pdf is a fairly accurate copy of the print books which I own but which are heavy things to lug about.
- e12e 12y agoLets hope that talented soul doesn't end up like Aaron Swartz.
- ddandd 12y agohttps://github.com/fmap/flp.mobi https://github.com/fmap/flp.mobi This repository previously included a toolchain to build a collection of eBooks, in ePub and MOBI formats, from Caltech's online edition of the Feynman Lectures. Those scripts have since been removed, in response to the suggestion that their continued availability might lead to a permanent discontinuation of HTML access.
- sb057 12y agohttp://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/buy.html http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/buy.html
- josealicarte 12y agoGreat lecture, this very useful :) to all fresher
- leephillips 12y agoThese books show more than anything else why Feynman is so revered among physicists as a teacher. An introductory course in physics, simple yet demanding, and shot through with Feynman's unique approach and personality.
- gordon_freeman 12y agothis is obviously a great news for Physics lovers like myself. I have been always intrigued and fascinated by Physics and unfortunately did not able to pursue it as my career but having free access to Feynman's lectures would definitely ignite passion in me and lot of others who are interested in subject.
- judk 12y agoFeynman actually found that the lectures kind of flopped as a semesters courses. It was too intense, IIRC.
- NamTaf 12y agoThat's correct. Having said that, they're a fantastic refresher for someone who has studied all of this at the high school / university level and wants to get a crash course. Feynmann loved his technical crash courses and these lectures show that he has a mastery of distilling out all of the details and leaving none of the chaff.
- ingenter 12y agoFeynman lectures on QED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvl6TBGEoO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvl6TBGEoO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjdbbnWsdis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjdbbnWsdis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF25Lwt73fg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF25Lwt73fg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtK6FdTg9HU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtK6FdTg9HU
- danesparza 12y agoI have to disable safety mode to watch these? WTF?
- teraflop 12y agoI don't know what "safety mode" is, but I didn't need to disable anything to watch the videos.
- charonn0 12y agoIt's an optional Youtube setting. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/174084?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/174084?hl=en
- jasonkostempski 12y agoPhysics is a dangerous thing.
- differentView 12y agoFeynman is known to enjoy looking at titties while working, just warning the prudes.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- cjrd 12y agoWow - this is awesome. Anybody interested in helping me map out a dependency graph of the concepts in the Feynman Lectures?
- adamfeldman 12y agoIf you did that it'd be super awesome. Maybe something like http://www.metacademy.org/about http://www.metacademy.org/about but for physics?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mathteacher1729 12y agoProbably not exactly the dependency map you are looking for, but perhaps still very useful. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hph.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hph.html
- allegory 12y agoWonderful news but particularly sickening for me as I fished out £130 for the hardback volumes last year! Absolutely great books however! I've learned a lot already from those books. Also, the "For the Practical Man" (algebra, geometry, trig, arithemtic) series of books on mathematics that Feynman started his career with. They are hard to get hold of and expensive but the calculus book is wonderful if incredibly dense and written in an early 1900's style! Those, a cheap Casio calculator, a box of pencils and some school exercise books have taught me more than a university degree and years of industry experience. Edit: found a legitimate PDF of "Calculus for the practical man" http://physsocyork.co.uk/notes/J.%20E.%20Thopmson--Calculus%20for%20the%20practical%20man.pdf http://physsocyork.co.uk/notes/J.%20E.%20Thopmson--Calculus%...
- NamTaf 12y agoI do not regret buying the hardcover copies for one second. I prefer reading stuff ilke this on paper - digital makes a good reference for quick checking of facts but I get a better, deeper understanding of it when I sit down and read it on paper at a desk.
- rdxm 12y agoevery now and then i go into the library and read a chapter out of my hardcover set of these. my kids do the "geeez dad" thing when i make them sit with me and look at them. classics.. to be sure.... edit: i almost feel like these shouldn't be something that gets digitized.....this knowledge and its presentation belongs in a tactile medium...
- allegory 12y agoAgree with this. Also if I get into a book, I always end up buying the thing as I don't want any electronic distractions taking away from it.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago>> "I don't want any electronic distractions taking away from it" Reading on Kindle is pretty distraction free I find.
- allegory 12y agoUntil it goes flat, you drop it or the damn thing decides you're not allowed to read the book any more or the ebook is a poorly OCR'ed copy with mistakes in it... Plus I can't give my books to other people to read when I'm done. I had a Kobo and a Kindle and they were horrid. I understand but no thanks.
- HCIdivision17 12y agoTo be sure, I too prefer a book. But there are plenty of times I would love the option to reference a book at an inconvenient time (like when I'm at work 50 miles away). Having a low fidelity option is preferable over none at all in these cases. Someday we'll have an honest-to-god book with e-ink, which will reconfigure itself to whatever we want to read and get the best of both worlds. (PopSci promised me this more than a decade ago and I'm bitter it hasn't happened yet!)
- gone35 12y agoThe plural of anecdote is data, so FWIW I'm exactly the opposite: not just for textbooks, but even for hardcover literature books I have right there in my bookshelf, I often end up digging up some PDF or Google Books version regardless. I guess I miss the scrolling/zooming, plus all the meta-textual, cross-referencing stuff like having multiple copies of the book in different sections side by side, easy access to references and definitions, etc. What one finds 'classical' is highly relative: remember Socrates famously despised books as a degrading and pernicious medium, for one [1]. [1] http://wondermark.com/socrates-vs-writing/ http://wondermark.com/socrates-vs-writing/
- k-mcgrady 12y agoIs this worth reading for someone without a particular need to understand physics in depth? What I mean is if I take the time to read these will I learn anything useful to someone not pursuing a career in physics or related field?
- lutusp 12y ago> Is this worth reading for someone without a particular need to understand physics in depth? For someone just curious about modern physics, without any specialized knowledge or advanced mathematical skill, it might be overwhelming.
- HCIdivision17 12y agoI suspect many of us would say yes. One of the things Feynman was known for was his knack for bringing ideas down to earth. As he opens in QED, you won't be able to solve heavy physics problems analytically in a short period of time, but with a little effort, you'll certainly be able to qualitatively understand the situation. And there's quite a lot of beauty to have there, even without heavy math (but there will be math!)
- ChuckMcM 12y agoYes, it is especially useful as they are vary approachable. That said they are also as deep as any 3 semester course in physics you're likely to take so at some point you will need the math skills to keep up.
- rwallace 12y agoThe honest answer is, unless your profession is in the physical sciences or hardware engineering, learning physics from this or other sources will probably not be useful. Whether it's worthwhile is to at least some extent a value judgment, and also as I see it, depends to some extent on what else you would have done with the time. If you have a block of time allocated for work, and you're thinking of spending it reading about physics instead of reading documentation on something you do actually need, that's probably suboptimal. If you've finished work for the day, you have a block of time allocated for intellectual leisure and you're trying to decide between reading about physics versus, say, the latest Dungeons & Dragons rules, in my opinion the former is more worthwhile.
- paulvs 12y agoJust chapter 1 contains answers to many questions that I've had on the back of my mind.. Why does water ice expand when it melts? If water ice is a crystalline structure, how can it vary in temperature (e.g. -5 degrees to -10 degrees). A very good read.
- yequalsx 12y agoPerhaps you misspoke or I'm not understanding correctly what you mean but from the book: "Another thing we can see from Fig. 1–4 is why ice shrinks when it melts. The particular crystal pattern of ice shown here has many “holes” in it, as does the true ice structure. When the organization breaks down, these holes can be occupied by molecules. Most simple substances, with the exception of water and type metal, expand upon melting, because the atoms are closely packed in the solid crystal and upon melting need more room to jiggle around, but an open structure collapses, as in the case of water."
- paulvs 12y agoI misspoke, I meant shrinks.. thanks for the heads up.
- madengr 12y agoDon't forget the audio is out there too!
- Shizka 12y agoIs it actually possible to learn this through audio? With equations and so forth I would imagine it being rather hard. Do you have any experience with it?
- madengr 12y agoYes I have the audio. No, it is no substitute for the book. The audio is of the lectures. The books are based on the lectures. It's just nice to have the audio to go along so you can hear his personality.
- rodrigoavie 12y agoThanks for the material. Anyone working towards translating the material?
- vanderZwan 12y agoGreat! This part kind of surprises me though: > However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read online, and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion of The Feynman Lectures on Physics for any purpose. I know it doesn't actually mean anything in practice, but still, I'm shaking my head in disbelief that there's still people out there clinging to this mentality. Aside from the fact that it's fundamentally technically impossible to read something online without downloading it first.
- _djhrtmn 12y agoYes, but isn't that basically the same thing as most streaming services? Netflix? To me, 'clinging' makes it sound like the idea has gone away.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- panzi 12y agoLawmakers redefined the meaning of download to "download and permanently store". They don't see "download and only hold in application cache for a limited time" as download.
- adrianN 12y agoUnless it's child porn, I think.
- 0003 12y agoSo we cannot not scrape this to see how many words are in each chapter, how the technical vocabulary changes over topics, or perform an analysis on connected keywords...
- PudgePacket 12y agoWell, If you're going on the definition of download as mentioned above you could write a javascript program to do it and run it on the webpages while they're still in browser.
- kabdib 12y agoI'd love to buy the PDFs, but they're DRMed and I refuse to rent ebooks. I guess I could buy them and then download the "pirate" versions from somewhere. Instead, I'll stick with my hardcopy edition.
- jayvanguard 12y agoIt is awesome how while the page is loading you see stuff like this: "Now if we multiply Eq. (41.19) by [math], [math]. We want the time average of [math], so let us take the average of the whole equation, and study the three terms. Now what about [math] times the force?" Soo... am I going to need math skills to understand this stuff?
- TylerE 12y agoYes. Calculus was basically invented to solve physics problems.
- gamesbrainiac 12y agoHonestly, I feel that Calc should be taught way earlier, the way that physics is taught in school feels rather incomplete. I mean without calculus, is quite difficult to understand physics.
- foobarqux 12y agoHow does this compare to Susskind's "The Theoretical Minimum"?
- DennisP 12y agoSusskind's is much shorter and goes into very little detail. It's really intended to give you a foundation for learning physics, while Feynmann's is meant to teach you lots of physics.
- foobarqux 12y agoDoes that apply to Susskind's video lectures as well?
- bkcooper 12y agoThe Feynman lectures certainly will teach you a lot, but I think it would be a fairly trying textbook for learning a lot of the material for the first time. Among other things, a very serious deficiency for self-education is a complete lack of problems to work (which just reflects that these really were lectures).
- DennisP 12y agoWhat would you recommend for self-education?
- bkcooper 12y agoThat's a tough question. One of the most appealing things about the Feynman lectures is the breadth and how self-contained it is. I don't think there are really good analogues for that. The closest thing I can think of is one of the monster first-year physics tomes like Halliday and Resnick. That will teach you much of the basics (large chunks of Vol. 1 and 2 of the Feynman lectures), has huge numbers of problems, but it is of course less fun. It is also probably comparably or more expensive. Going much further than that gets tricky, because you will usually need more development in math in concert with the physics. The omnibus "engineering mathematics" type books will cover a lot of it but I don't really like them. Boas's Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences would be something I would look at. For more detailed looks at electromagnetism and quantum mechanics, I (and many others I know) really liked David Griffiths's textbooks. The Feynman lectures make an excellent supplement to these for the different perspective and interesting physical insights.
- dominotw 12y agoHas anyone completed all of the 3 parts? How much time did it take you ?
- acomar 12y agoIt's generally a three semester to a full two year sequence at most universities. You can of course go faster or slower depending on your own capacity to self-study and learn, but most bright people will probably fall somewhere in that spread to get a solid grasp of the total contents. That said, it's always helpful at first to skim through and get a surface understanding of the whole picture before you dive in and try to understand it all. You can probably complete a surface scan like that in a few weeks or months. I studied these becomes along with my high school physics course and completed the books in about a year, but I was spending double the usual amount of time on this stuff. As a high school student, I didn't have anything better to do, but as an adult I'd expect it to take me two dedicated years.
- gourneau 12y agoProject Tuva has a great series of lectures Feynman gave around that time http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/ http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/
- metaobject 12y agoSilverlight only. Too bad MS cares more about pushing their proprietary technology than sharing important historical / educational material.
- 3rd3 12y agoOne of the rare cases of "internet done right".
- nirai 12y agoAn offline version of the website is still floating around the Internet space.