Richard P. Feynman

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0><script type="text/javascript" src="http://hb.lycos.com/hb.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ratings.lycos.com/ratings/lycosRating.js.php"></script> <script type="text/javascript"><![CDATA[//><!]]></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://scripts.lycos.com/catman/init.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://members.tripod.com/adm/ad/code-start.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://members.tripod.com/adm/ad/code-middle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://members.tripod.com/adm/ad/code-end.js"></script> <noscript> <img src="http://members.tripod.com/adm/img/common/ot_noscript.gif?rand=769122" alt="" width="1" height="1" />  <iframe frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" width="728" height="90" src="http://ad.yieldmanager.com/st?ad_type=iframe&ad_size=728x90&section=209094"></iframe>  </noscript> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="079d4c00dduajq.gif"> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="95" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 46 WIDTH="91"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="46" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="91" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="097a0c80.gif" border=0 width="160" height="200" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Feynman at CalTech</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="0a8b3c80.gif" border=0 width="179" height="200" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Feynman talking with Dirac at Relativity Conference in Warsaw</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="0aaacc10.gif" border=0 width="172" height="193" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Feynman reading</div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#003333" FACE="Arial" ><B>Home For Physicists</b></FONT>     |     <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Home For Physicists"><U>home</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="My Background"><U>My Background</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="My Current Interests"><U>My Current Interests</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Physics Links"><U>Physics Links</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Me"><U>Contact Me</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id24.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Short Stories, and SuchElse"><U>Short Stories, and SuchElse</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Some Thoughts"><U>Some Thoughts</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id37.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Physics and Math Forum"><U>Physics and Math Forum</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id43.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Phunnies"><U>The Phunnies</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id48.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Itaena Project"><U>Itaena Project</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id49.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Poetry"><U>Poetry</U></A>   |   <B>Richard P. Feynman</b></div> <div> Richard P. Feynman</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="098cf490.gif" border=0 width="463" height="329" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> "You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." </div> <div> <B>Richard Feynman</b></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="0b9969d0.gif" border=0 width="150" height="157" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> This is a relatively short (but rich) page I plan on continuously updating when I have the time.  </div> <div> Richard Feynman did so much during his life, it would be hard for me to capture it in the detail I'd like!  If you have read his creations, you know the man better than I could ever describe, but for the new and the sincere admirers, I've provided as much background as yet possible.</div> <bR> <div> I'd like to think of Feynman as someone who was delighted by the universe he lived in and the enigmas it presented to him.  It was a child-like, in the sense that it was pure and honest, fascination.  While this quality is rare in and of itself, what made the man rare was not only curiosity but the ability to investigate and theorize.  Not all possess minds such as his, and if they do, often they are not directed towards such pure goals.</div> <bR> <div> I have some of my own reviews of Feynman's works below, as well as links to personal pages on him, a short explanation of Feynman diagrams, and more links of a more quantitative nature.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id34.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Reviews of Feynman Works"><U>Reviews of Feynman works</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="id35.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Experience Feynman!"><U><B>Experience Feynman</b></U></A><B>!</b></div> <div>  </div> <div> <I><B>This is a great page where I post up some of Feynman's papers, his thoughts on life; quips, and anecdotes.  </b></I></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Some Brief Thoughts on Feynman:</b></div> <bR> <div> Having been a physics student for a few years now, professors in my classes have (more than once) suggested the use of the Feynman Lectures as wonderful learning tools, great exposes that shed light on the beauty of simple physical ideas, and perhaps the nature of the ideal physicist -- he (or she) who seeks to simply the world (universe) about him by knowing physical abstractions so well that they have become feelings and images in his brain, no longer tools of the physicist that he pulls out of a rusty toolbox but rather a part of the reasoning of the physicist, a new way of thinking different from how he was told to think as he was growing up (I think we're all well aware of the failings of schools where teachers are merely babysitters with at most a bachelor's degree in humanities).  </div> <bR> <div> For, really, Feynman himself isn't the object of our (my) obsession and goal --- he is merely the purest image of the ambitious physicist who has much knowledge and still retains a child-like innocence in his view of the beauty and happiness of living.  I'm very lucky to agree with his view of life, and to be close to one other who does --- but it has also become quite apparent to me that there are very few out there who burn for learning the very core of Truth --- why we're here --- why <I>anything</I> is here.  Through the language of math we interpret the world and find delicate, unique equations --- why these mathematical relations and not others?  Why fermions and bosons?  Why uncertainty?  Why four forces?  Why four dimensions?  </div> <bR> <div> I haven't yet found the answer to these questions, but I seek them for the sake of themselves and will work until either I find them or death.  For who could imagine a more wonderful and purposeful life?</div> <bR> <bR> <div> LINKS:</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.around.com/genius.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.around.com/genius.html"><U>Genius-The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.aip.org/history/esva/exhibits/feynman.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.aip.org/history/esva/exhibits"><U>American Physical Society: Feynman Mini-Exhibit</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.scs-intl.com/online/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.scs-intl.com/online/"><U>Feynman Online</U></A></div> <div>     This is a very good site, filled with pictures, quotes, and links.  </div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://pages.prodigy.com/dwinn/feynman.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://pages.prodigy.com/dwinn/feynman.h"><U>A Short Biography of Feynman and Description of His Work</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.omnimag.com/archives/interviews/feynman.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.omnimag.com/archives/intervie"><U>INTERVIEW: Richard Feynman (May 1979)</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.search.caltech.edu/archives/action.lasso?-database=Archives_Web_Catalog.FP5&-layout=Search_Layout&-noResults=No_Result_Found.html&-response=/Archives/Hit_List_Archives.html&-maxrecords=50&search_field=Feynman&type=photo&-search" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.search.caltech.edu/archives/a"><U>Caltech Archives: Archives Catalog Search</U></A></div> <div>     This is a good site with a lot of photos --- rather tear-jerking, however.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Feynman Diagrams</div> <bR> <div> Feynman diagrams describe the interactions between particles predicted by a theory called QED (quantumelectrodynamics).  Like vector diagrams, Feynman was able to represent difficult mathematical concepts with pictures --- they are very exact, mathematically, however.  The straight lines indicate the path of a fermion, a particle like an electron that obeys the Pauli exclusion principle.  The squiggly lines represent a photon or other boson (force carrying particle).  Often photons are passed back and forth between say, an electron and a proton.  In fact, a 'collision' between two fermions often is just the interchange ofa  photon, or some energy, between them.</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="099c82c0.gif" border=0 width="200" height="300" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">     <IMG SRC="09ac82c0.gif" border=0 width="200" height="300" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">  </div> <div>     </div> <div> Noticing the loop below, we see the creation of a virtual pair, an electron-positron pair that has temporarily 'borrowed energy from the void' and whose lifetime is dictated by how much energy it borrows (this should be the same for an electron positron pair, and be larger for, say, a muon and anti-muon pair).</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="09bc82c0.gif" border=0 width="200" height="300" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">    <IMG SRC="09cc82c0.gif" border=0 width="200" height="300" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> <B>A few thoughts on the energy-time uncertainty principle in connection with virtual electron-positron pairs:</b></div> <bR> <div> The creation of electron and positron pairs was a key factor to renormalizing classical quantum mechanics so terms in certain energy expansions didn't blow up and (obviously) give unphysical results.  But why are we 'allowed' to create these positron-electron pairs, and how can we visualize the bubbling background of the universe?  </div> <bR> <div> There are uncertainty principles connected with any observables that don't commute with each other; in other words, observables which don't share eigenstates (we can't measure them at the same time with certainty).  This is true also for energy and time, but in this instance we must think of the relation a bit differently than the others.  The relationship between energy and time is merely a minimum to how long it takes for us to know a change in energy occurred in the system.  </div> <bR> <div> But what can we glean from this?  Well, for a larger amount of energy change, the uncertainty in time to make it happen gets smaller, and the uncertainty is larger for a smaller energy change.  Which means that very tiny energy changes are 'allowed' to happen all the time, as long as we construct the change so that it takes under the time which it's uncertain by.  For example, if the time it takes to create an electron-positron pair is B seconds, and it takes an amount of energy which corresponds to a time uncertainty of 2B seconds, than it's obvious it could be (but not necessarily) happening all the time.  We call the process described above 'vacuum fluctuations.'  The 'photon loop' in the last image above is a visual representation of what's going on.</div> <bR> <div> <B>In fact...</b></div> <bR> <div> There are some cosmologists out there who think that the universe itself is just a very large (an albeit improbable) vacuum fluctuation.  But don't go running to your physics teacher with that factoid; he'll probably get quite flustered.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Various other links:</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/9302097" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/9302097"><U>The Feynman Path Integral:  Christian Grosche</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/r/e/redingtn/www/netadv/qed.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/us"><U>Net Advance of Physics:  Quantum electrodynamics</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.shef.ac.uk/~phys/teaching/phy304/qed.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.shef.ac.uk/~phys/teaching/phy"><U>Fundamental Interactions:  Quantum electrodynamics</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.npaci.edu/envision/v16.1/kinoshita.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.npaci.edu/envision/v16.1/kino"><U>Putting QED to the Test</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.collectedthoughts.com/oldsite/indices/author/feynman_richardp.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.collectedthoughts.com/oldsite"><U>Quotes On Life from Various "Fun" Books by Feynman</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR>  <div align="center"> <center> <table border="0" bgcolor="#66CCFF"> <tr> <td align="center"><font face="verdana,arial,helvetica" size="2"><img border="0" src="http://www.scs-intl.com/navimages/feynman.gif" width="50" height="66"></font></td> <td align="center"><b><font face="verdana,arial,helvetica" size="3">The Feynman Webring</font></b> <p><font face="verdana,arial,helvetica" size="2"> <bR> <a href="http://www.scs-intl.com/cgi-bin/webzone/zone.cgi?id=37&dir=next" target="_top">Next Site</a> <a href="http://www.scs-intl.com/cgi-bin/webzone/zone.cgi?id=37&dir=prev" target="_top">Previous Site</a> <a href="http://www.scs-intl.com/cgi-bin/webzone/zone.cgi?list">List Sites</a> <a href="http://www.scs-intl.com/online/webzone">Join</a> </font></td> </tr> </table> </center> </div>  <bR> <bR>  <center> <table border=0 cellpadding=12><tr align=center><td> <a href=http://www.escati.com> <img src=http://escati.linkopp.net/logos/counter2001.gif border=0 alt="Escati Free Counter"></a><br> <font face=arial size=1><b> You are Visitor No:</b></font><br> <table border=1><tr><td> <a href=http://www.escati.com> <img src=http://escati.linkopp.net/cgi-bin/counter2001.cgi?525608 border=0></a><br> </td></tr></table> <a href=http://escati.linkopp.net/counter2001/525608.shtml> <font face=arial size=1><b> View Counter Stats</b></font></a><br> </td></tr></table> </center>  <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>