Reviews of Feynman Works

<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=190572" 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="0b35b8c0.gif" border=0 width="91" height="140" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="0b45a8c0.gif" border=0 width="90" height="140" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></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="id35.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Experience Feynman!"><U>Experience Feynman!</U></A>   |   <B>Reviews of Feynman Works</b></div> <div> Reviews of Feynman Works</div> <bR> <div> "Six Not-So-Easy Pieces"</div> <bR> <div>          "Six Not-So-Easy Pieces" are six selections from the Feynman "Lectures on Physics". They represent not the hardest material to be found in the "Lectures" (and certainly not elsewhere concerning Feymnan's essays or other lectures) but perhaps some of the most thought-provoking and challenging conceptually (although, if you would like a conceptual challenge, check out Feynman's "QED"). Spacetime, Relativity (Special and General), Vectors, Symmetry --- there is no end to the knowledge and unique grasp of physics that Feynman possesses. </div> <bR> <div>        He first introduces the reader to some fundamental that they need in order to begin thinking like a physicist -- specifically, vector algebra, connecting directions with movements in space. This might take a little while for the beginner to work through, but he is careful to show all of the steps geometrically and makes it seem quite clear. </div> <bR> <div>           Then he moves on to talk about symmetries physicists know and work with, especially the symmetry where the physics you do is invariant according to your place in space and time. Capping the book off with more abstractly challenging concepts -- special relativity and general relativity, tying ideas of the previous chapters in (vectors and symmetry) he slowly is able to make beginning readers understand aspects of physics difficult even for the amateur physicist. </div> <bR> <div>        I recommend this book to any high school student who has had geometry, and to any scientific and non-scientific reader who is curious about the universe. </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>QED</b></div> <bR> <bR> <div> In introductory physics courses, whether in high school or college, one tends to be exposed to some of the rudiments of electromagnetism. Often it seems overly complex or badly organized: while all of classical electromagnetism can be put under the header of Maxwell's equations, the student learns that there are separate equations for resistance, capacitance, magnetic and electric fields in matter as opposed to vacuum, moving electric fields and static, and what is all this business about fields, anyway? The student is told of a world where electrons do indeed collide, the speed of light can slow in some media, and electric and magnetic fields are two different things. </div> <bR> <div> In QED (quantum electrodynamics) none of these mysteries exist. "Fields" don't act differently in matter, and electrons *don't* collide. The speed of light does not slow, and magnetic and electric fields are two aspects of the same relativistic effect (this is known generally to students above the freshman level, but unfortunately is either skimmed over or is untouched by an introductory course). How is all this made possible? Why, by simply understanding what electromagnetism really is, on the most fundamental level: the interactions between electrons, mediated by photons they pass between one another, emit or absorb, or pass back and forth between themselves and the nucleus. Indeed, all of electromagnetism can be generalized to tiny particles emitting and absorbing packets of light --- and this simplicity of thought, this generalization, is what led many people back then and now (including myself) to consider Richard Feynman one of the greatest minds physics has ever known. </div> <bR> <div> This book is better if one has taken an introductory physics course in high school or elsewhere, but it is not necessary to have any prior physics or higher level math background. One just needs to have a good imagination to picture interactions on such a tiny and observationally unknowable scale. </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id32.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Richard P. Feynman"><U>back to Feynman page</U></A></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>