Reviews (5)

feynmans way
I think this is a good supplemental book. it's like his course on physics; you cant learn from it alone; but with a canonical text it adds wonderful insight on a subject. His theory of fundamental processes is out of date (way before tau neutrinos, and there are mistakes in parts); so i would avoid that one. this one I find to be about the level of sophistication of his lectures on gravitation, but explaining field theory. Feynman naturally has a slightly more functional approach than other books of this era. I think it's a good book to keep next to something like peskin and schroeder in ones personal library

The first great Feynman classic
This book collects a set of lectures by Feynman on quantum electrodynamics and a few reprints of his papers on the subject.Nowadays it would be a (hard) graduate course. At its time it was written for Feynman?s peers. At that time the method developped by him, though he had total control of it, was not complete as far as derivations are concerned. However, each topic was solidly grounded on the basis of specific arguments. This is how things are done. Usually you have a hundred incomplete arguments which, put together, are, so to speak, stronger than a formal demonstration. And, what arguments! What insight this (then) young guy had already!This book is for pleasure! You probably should read it together with some modern text, like Veltman?s "Diagrammatica", to get the modern perspective and also to see how little, after all, was changed. A companion book, called "Theory of Fundamental Processes" is also a sterling lecture, for the same reasons. Perhaps even more so.

Reviews (1)

Reviews (11)

Very good "nonstandard" treatment of QM.
This is a great book to learn path integrals from if you are just getting started in field theory and want a good physical feel for them. It is too bad there aren't copies available for a reasonable price. $500 is just too high a price to pay.

Green functions expressed as functional integrals
Written in the typical, beautiful Feynman style, this book is fine for an advanced student who already knows quantum mechanics and Green functions from a standard source like Sakurai or Merzbacher. It presents Feynman's interpretation of quantum mechanics in chapter 1 via the two-slit experiment, and the rest of the book is devoted to showing how to formulate and calculate the one particle Green function for simple systems, systems with completely integrable classical analogs (it's implicitly assumed that Ldt is a closed differential, where L is the classical Lagrangian). The path integral formulation was also later used by other researchers to arrive at a semi-classical approximation to the three body problem, a nonintegrable and even chaotic classical system (nonintegrable classical systems cannot be solved by the standard method of finding a complete set of commuting constants of the motion).

The functional integral formulation of Brownian motion was formulated earlier by Norbert Wiener. An analogous formulation of quantum theory was arrived at independently by Feynman, who took seriously a conjecture by Dirac about the meaning of the exponential of the classical action as a probability amplitude. A more complete treatment of classical Brownian motion (including the so-called 'Feynman-Kac formula' for Brownian motion) was given later by Mark Kac in "Probability and Related Methods in the Physical Sciences".

Chapter one presents with Feynman's interpretation of quantum mechanics, the interpretation accepted by theorists today, as nonclassical rules for combining probability amplitudes for particle propagation. Waves are not mentioned because the mental gyrations inherent in the Copenhagen 'wave-particle duality' are completely avoided in the Dirac-Feynman approach. See, as forerunner ofFeynman's interpretation, Dirac's discussion of photons interfering with themselves in a hypothetical two-slit experiment, in the introduction to his famous text "Quantum Mechanics".

In other words, this book is for students who are ready to face the fact that there is no 'wave-particle' picture, or any geometrical picture of reality, at the quantum level: the reader who really understands Feynman's description of the two-slit experiment will realize that we cannot say about the hydrogen atom that an electron is moving about the nucleus, unless we do a scattering experiment to detect the electron (an electron doesn't follow a path, nor is it in two different places at the same time, there is in the end only the space-time propagation of quantized fields). As Feynman admitted, we do not really 'understand' quantum mechanics, although we can do all of the calculations describing experiments. The 'measurement problem', the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper and subsequent experiments and papers on quantum teleportation make this viewpoint clear. Quantum mechanics, nature at the microscopic level, is stranger than anything that you can imagine!

The Dirac-Feynman interpretation of quantum theory is presented by Sakurai, who also discusses the measurement problem. Merzbacher doesn't teach Dirac-Feynman but does discuss Galilean invariance via gauge transformations, and sets up the two-body problem in a form that is useful for understanding the enstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper.

Reviews (5)

a tremendous book
when i was undergrad, i read Prof. Kerson Huang's stat mech. i think that book is good. everything is covered systematically, but everything is explained 'evenly'. if u r a careful reader, u still get the ideas of the essence, like partition function plays the central role of stat mech, etc.

now, i am reading feynman's book. it's totally diff from huang's. it's full of excitement. he put the principle of stat mech which is the relation b/w partition function and probability at the very beginning. all the other aspects in stat mech follow so straight forword and there are endless novel derivations in this book. i feel many of my previous understandings are interconnected by reading this book.

it's simply great, just like the other books written by feynman.

Style over substance.
Feynman was one of the most accomplished physicists in the 2nd half of the 20th century.His publications speak for themselves.However, as represented in this set of lecture notes, for example, I do not find him as a pedagogue more enlightening than others.I bought and read this book in grad school, and found it to be a nice quick intro to several topics (spin waves and such).I did not, and still don't find the exposition physically exceptionally profound.One difference though, is the fact that Feynman, with his fame, could afford to be rather informal in his presentation.Any unsatisfactory aspects would be accepted as the mysterious ways of a 'genius'.If you are a student and would like to learn to solve problems on your own, forget this one.What this book gives you is a little 'attitude', aside from a quick intro, which most of us haven't earned the right to put on, of doing physics.Try it.Try to be as unorthodox and informal as he was, and you will mostly end up with nonsense.

Reviews (9)

An awful compendium
The book is already out of print, which perhaps indicates a
collective wisdom of the technical readership. As others (e.g.,
"zero stars") have pointed out, this is a carelessly compiled
assortment of facts.And it is too bad, because Feynman
deserves a fine technical biography.There do exist
excellent books on Feynman's life and work.Gleick's "Genius"
is a masterful personal biography (Gleick is a fine writer
for the technically literate; e.g., see his "Chaos").
Schweber's "QED and the men who made it" is an excellent
historical presentation of QED, in which of course Feynman
plays a major role. But Mehra's book fails in all aspects.
In particular, the technical parts are disorganized and
full of errors. I gave up half way through the book in disgust.

Feynman's technical work went well beyond QED and
the introduction of path integral methods. It was
so broad that few scientific biographers could have done
it justice.Mehra failed.Pais didn't try.
Schweber has covered Feynman's early contributions well.
But there is much good writing on (and by) Feynman.
If you want to know more about Feynman's life and personality,
see "Genius", along with Ralph Leighton's wonderful 2-volume
retelling of Feynman's stories and his "Tuva or Bust".
Also, see the 1990 memorial issue of Physics Today, devoted to
his work style and relationships with his colleagues.
Feynman was often described as a "teacher's teacher," and
the 3 volume "Lectures" demonstrate that well.Feynman's
no-nonsense, intuitive approach also comes out in his
1960-era monographs "Quantum Electrodynamics" and "Theory of
Fundamental Processes", which, though written before
the Standard Model, still give a fine introduction to relativistic quantum mechanics.

An awful compendium
The book is already out of print, which indicates a collective
wisdom of the technical readership.As others (e.g., "zero
stars") have pointed out, this is a carelessly compiled
assortment of facts.And it is too bad, because Feynman
deserves a fine technical biography. And there do exist
excellent books on Feynman's life and work.Gleick's "Genius"
is a masterful personal biography (Gleick is a fine writer
for the technically literate: e.g., see his "Chaos").
Schweber's "QED and the men who made it" is an excellent
historical presentation of QED, in which of course Feynman
plays a major role.But Mehra's book fails in all aspects.
In particular, the technical parts are disorganized and
full of errors.I gave up half way through the book
in disgust.

If you want to know about Feynman's life and personality, see
"Genius", along with Ralph Leighton's wonderful 2-volume
retelling of Feynman's stories and his "Tuva or Bust".
Also, see the 1990 memorial issue of Physics Today devoted to
his relationships with his colleagues.He was often
described as a "teacher's teacher."The 3 volume "Lectures"
demonstrate that well.Feynman's no-nonsense,
intuitive approach also comes out
in his monographs "Quantum Electrodynamics" and "Theory
of Fundamental Processes", which still give a fine
introduction to relativistic quantum mechanics.
But Feynman's technical work went well beyond
QED and the introduction of path integral methods.It was
so broad that few scientific biographers could have done
it justice.Pais didn't try.Schweber has covered Feynman's
early contributions well.

Reviews (9)

I like this book
Yes, I think you can teach the theory of computation from this book.And you can learn it from this book.Some of the material isn't all that recent, but much of it doesn't need to be.

35 years ago, if one were teaching a course on the theory of computation, I'd have recommended Minsky's book (it came out in 1967).That was a great text.Nowadays, there are numerous choices.But one could still use books that originally came out well before Feynman's notes, such as Lewis & Papadimitriou or Hopcroft, Motwani, and Ullman.

The question boils down to the quality of what is in the book, as well as what material it has that other books do not, and what material it is missing that most other texts have.

This book is quite readable and preserves much of Feynman's teaching style.So let's look at what it is missing.First, it doesn't talk much about real neurons.Of course, even Minsky doesn't dwell much on that, and other computation books avoid that topic too.But now, there's a more serious omission.Feynman spends something like two pages on grammars! If you were using Lewis and Papadimitriou (first edition) there would be a chapter of over 70 pages on context-free languages alone.As a teacher or a student, would you really want to miss all that?

No, as a student, you would have to read up on all that material elsewhere.And as a teacher, you would have to use another book or write your own notes.That material is too much a part of most required curricula.

But that doesn't take away from the value of the book when it comes to the rest of the material.And the final four chapters, which discuss coding and information theory, reversible computation and the thermodynamics of computing, quantum mechanical computers, and some physical aspects of computation, are all useful material that you often won't see in other computation texts.

As a student, I'd read the book.As a teacher, I'd recommend it to my students.But as either, I wouldn't expect to use it as the only textbook.

Dissapointing is correct
We physicists want a readable book on computability, degrees of computational complexity, and the like. Feynman would have been the writer to provide us with that. We're fortunate to have anything at all of what Feynman thought about the subject, but this book (taken from Feynman's rough lecture notes) does not do the job. E.g., in the first chapter we're presented with a description of RPF's joy in discovery and corresponding philosophy of how to understand anything: don't read about it, just work it out by yourself in umpteen different ways (nothing new about Feynman there!), but the examples provided of how Feynman actullally worked it out can be compared with some of Arnol'd's presentations of how he worked out mechanics problems in his text on Classical Mechanics (state the problem, then state the final result). So we still need a SYSTEMATIC 'written-for physicists' text on computability. Neverthless, we can be grateful to Hey and Allen for putting together these stimulating Feynman fragments for us, especially since they stem from his last days of life as a physicist.

By the way, Feynman certainly would not have agreed with S. Weinberg's extreme reductionist philisophy that asserts that once we've understood quantum theory and quarks then we've understood physics/nature, that 'the rest is mere detail'. On the other hand, he surely would have horselaughed the holists who proclaim that reductionism is dead, that physics will become more like 'poetry'. The lie in the latter nonsense is exposed by the entire field of genetics and cell biology, which is where the 'real' complexity in nature is to be found. Every physics student should be required to take a good class in molecular biolgy these days, a subject that's a lot more important and a lot more interesting than string theory (which, as Feynman more or less said, has degenerated into mere philosophy in the absence of experiments to test the ideas) .

Reviews (2)

This is an advanced book
This book is a kind of classic for what it is: a presentation of some "simple" ways of understanding certain phenomena in elementary particle physics. It's simple if you understand something of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), Feynman diagrams, and basic quantum field theory. You must be able to infer the computational implications of Feynman diagrams.

If you can do this, you may find the book to be useful and unique. If you can't, you're pretty much wasting your time with it.

Reviews (20)

Genius!
What is better than learning physics from the giant in physics himself? The ideas in his lectures are so enlightening and well explained that it is a MUST read for anyone interested in physics, in despite of his or her technical background. Being a high school student, I have, nontheless, grasped most of his clear presentation. His explanation on quantum theory and the analogies he makes are just the best I've ever read. His lectures are, by no means, straightforward or ordinary. I have to read some parts twice or three time to fully understand what he is trying to convey. Keep in mind when reading it: This is a true genius talking.

Feynman Delivers
This is yet another book that attempts to convey the essence of physics to common people.After explaining exactly why it can't be done, arguing that you'll never get it, Feynman goes right ahead and does it anyway.

For each topic, you get a feel for his goal in covering a topic.He explains gravity, yes, to explain gravity, but also because by explaining it he can also convey what essential properties gravity has that other laws have.

He also explains the difference between fundamental laws and the consequences of those laws.That the individual laws are reversible, but that probability is responsible for the arrow of time.He spends a lot of time showing the difficult relationship between the basic laws (which are reversible) and the irreversibility of events.Both are characteristics of the physical universe but the latter is not a fundamental law.The latter is a logical outcome of them.

So there's a hierarchy, which goes; fundamental laws like gravity at the ground level, consequences of them like irreversibility and surface tension at one level up, organic chemistry further up, then eventually concepts like tree, frog, man, pain, beauty, good and evil - each at a higher level, but based upon the levels below them, and difficult to fully predict using only the laws of the lower levels.The levels can be extended up and down.Below gravity is the unification theory of everything.Above good and evil are love, politics, etc.

And then he asks, of the extremes on this hierarchy, the fundamental laws and the most abstract concepts, which is closest to God?After asking for patience with his religious reference, he spends little time before revealing his belief that the question is flawed.To understand God is to understand how the levels interrelate; how the fundamental laws were "chosen" so that they would lead to the unfolding of all the beautiful complexity that we see around us.

Is this what you want to learn?Why else do we read these books than to attempt to gain a bit more insight into the eternal questions.Most authors that tackle the nature of the universe have a theological axe to grind (the need for God or not) and can't hide it.This book did more on this topic, with fewer pages, while offending me the least because of any theological bias (either way), than anything I've read before.

Reviews (2)

Physics by two of the very best!
As usual, the best physics books are short and to the point, as is this one. The two Dirac lectures may serve as a perfectly good mini physics course all by themselves.I always enjoy a Feynman lecture, and this isno exception. He cuts to the chase without sacrificing the plot. But, Imust say, in this case the Wienberg lecture is the better of the two.Weinberg's style has a particular grace & beauty about it that gentlyexposes the aesthetic meaning of the search for a picture of nature.

Isbn: 0201360748
Sales Rank: 635465
Subjects:  1. Nuclear Physics    2. Particle Physics    3. Physics    4. Science    5. Science/Mathematics   

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• Unabridged

Reviews (83)

One size doesn't fit all
First, on the question of whether the original lectures were a failure. In the April 2005 issue of Physics Today, Matthew Sands writes about the project that resulted in the Feynman Lectures. He disputes the claim that the undergraduates drifted away from Feynman's lectures in large numbers, and explains how Feynman's preface came about, and why he (Sands) finds it unduly negative.

It has always been widely agreed that the Lectures are insufficient as a standalone textbook, and best used as supplemental reading. As can be seen from the reviews here, Feynman's approach appeals to many readers, but falls flat with others. This is not surprising, as different people respond to different ways of explaining physics. As an historical aside, Feynman and Schwinger took such different approaches to developing quantum electrodynamics theory that it wasn't immediately clear that their formulations were even equivalent. Most physicists find Feynman's approach easier to learn, but others find it unsatisfying. People are different. Physicists are different. Even physics students are different. There is not, and will never be, one book that is the best for every reader. The Feynman Lectures are great because they have been so enlightening to so many people, not because they meet the impossible standard of being clear to every reader.

Very informal but entertaining
I read these books several years ago because one of my professor is a super Feynman fan.He told us how wonderful these lectures are.By curiosity,I found them out in the library and tried to read them.I must say that these books are not that easy to read.The style is very informal.There are not many equations in the books.If you don't have some knowledge about a topic and you want to learn it from these lectures,you will soon feel very frustrated.I agree that Feynman is a great physicist but probably he is not that good at preaching knowledge.If you ever read Freeman Dyson's Disturbing the Universe,you ought to know that Feynman is not very good at explaining his own ideas at least in those period of time while Dyson was in Cornell.I shall not suggest a beginner starts learning physics from these lectures.But if you have learned physics several years and want to see some fresh explanation of some topics you are familiar with,you can find many interesting stuff in these lectures.I think that the true value of these books.

Reviews (20)

From A Great Teacher
Though the title implies it, this book is not really a sequal to the Six Easy Pieces. They can be read seperately. It treats some of the concepts centered around Special and General Relativity that revolutionized physics near the turn of the century. It would be impossible to find another book that can dive so deeply into topics such as symmetry and space-time, while bypassing formalism and exposing the fundemental ideas and signficance in every-day terms. The delivery is in lecture form, and while that makes it more authentic and real, the fact that this is a book and the reader is not really in a lecture, makes it a little awkward. One often gets the feeling that one had to be there to get the full benefit. There is little attempt at explaining the historical context and other niceties and focus is solely on the concepts themselves. One needs to have at least college level math background to follow the derivations. Feynman has done a phenomenal job in reducing such complex concepts into digestable pieces of conversation. There is no abstraction, everything is quantified. I especially enjoyed the chapter Curved Space, as I had never seen it treated so intimately. The self consistency of all these topics and how they are interrelated is elegantly presented.

Great lectures, though a bit out of place
Six not so Easy Pieses is a small anthology of six pieces taken from Feynman's great classic, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, which were delivered to Caltech freshman.I would not recommend buying this book unless you have an excellent backround in calculus and how it relates to physics.I have read the first volume of the Lectures, and i will tell you it is nice having this to accompany it, since some of the chapters such as on Relativity merit to be read twice and since the Lectures is so bulky and heavy.There is no way someone can read understand what he's saying without knowing a good amount of math.Its like reading a book in which all the concepts are expressed in Greek.Also, these lectures were given during the middle of course, and he often mentions things which were discussed in previous lectures.The reason it gets a four is because the lectures are great (many great lectures were ommitted though), but it is too short and is out of place.This is NOT a great sequel to Six Easy Lectures, they have practically nothing to do with each other.The perfect sequal to Six Easy Lectures is the whole first volume of the Lectures.

Reviews (4)

Who says QFT is not fun to teach?
This book is a counterexample to the idea that one cannot write a book on quantum field theory and keep a sense of humour. Quantum field theory of course is notoriously difficult, both in terms of its conceptual foundations and in calculating meaningful answers from its formalism. Perturbation theory has been the most succesful of the methods of calculation in quantum field theory, and the visualization of the terms of the perturbation series is greatly assisted by the use of Feynman diagrams. The author has done a great job in the elucidation of these diagrams, and readers will not only have fun reading this book but will also take away needed expertise in moving on to more advanced presentations of quantum field theory. Some readers may object to the pictorial, playful way in which the author explains some of the concepts, but he does not depart from the essential physics. Mathematicians who want to understand quantum field theory can also gain much from the reading of this book. Although not rigorous from a mathematical standpoint, the presentation will given them sorely needed intuition. Quantum field theory has resulted in an explosion of very interesting results in mathematics, particularly in the field of differential topology, and mathematicians need this kind of a presentation to assist them in the understanding of quantum field theory and how to apply it to mathematics (and the other way around). In addition, readers intending to enter the field of condensed matter physics will appreciate the clarity of the author's treatment, drawing as it does on many examples from that field. This includes a brief introduction to finite temperature quantum field theory.

The use of mnemonics, pictures, and hand-waving arguments may be frowned upon by some, but as long as their use is supported by solid science, their didactic power is formidable. Arguments by analogy, and by appeals to common-sense objects are of great utility in explaining the intricacies of a subject as abtruse as quantum field theory. The author for example uses a pin-ball game, with its many scatterings, as a tool for introducing the quantum propagator, even though paths of a (classical) pin-ball are not really meaningful in the quantum realm. Once done though, he proceeds to derive the perturbation series, and as an example computes the energy and lifetime of an electron in an impure metal.

The concept of a quasi-particle is exploited fully in this book to illustrate just how one can do calculations in quantum many-body theory. The reader will find ample discussion of Dyson's equation, the random phase approximation, phase transitions in Fermi systems, the Kondo problem, and the renormalization group in this book.

Happy reading.....(and teaching).....

Excellent, but maybe not enough
This is indeed an excellent book. Witty and insightful, but sometimes the ease, with which you're lead through it, is in the way of stressing the really important stuff. If you are learning diagrams for the first time, and intend to do some serious research using the technique, I believe this book is just not enough: it will leave you unprepared to do much beyond the problems in the book. You might want to consult a more rigorous book, like that of Abrikosov et al., but the style may be a bit of a shock to those not used to the Russian "condensed writing". As an introduction that is less painful, and more of a textbook, I suggest Fetter and Walecka's book, though it's out of print.

Reviews (4)

A QFT book for physicists not for mathematicians
This is a QFT book written by a physicist (Veltman is one of the
1999 Physics Nobel prize winners) for physicists. Mathematical
rigour was definitely not one of Veltman's major concerns when he
wrote this book. However clarity was indeed a big issue for him
and that is most unusual if you take into account that most Nobel
prize awarded physicist, are usually much more concerned about
"image", "posterity" and "mathematical rigour" than by
pedagogical matters.

This book is a very good one to start with if you want to learn
QFT. It makes no use of the path integral formalism (which is the
prefered one by "modern" QFT theorists) . The canonical
formalism (the one used in this book) makes explicit the local
nature of QFT; this is an important issue since locallity stems
from Lorentz invariance and QFT is nothing but the physical
theory resulting from quantummechanics and restricted
relativity. I fully agree with the statement that the path
integral method should be sistematicallydiscarded in
introductory QFT books like this one.


As its title indicates, Feynman diagrams are the central issue of
this book. Veltman explains in the introduction: "This is then
the aim: to make it clear which principles are behind the
(Feynman) rules and to define clarly the calculation details".
This seems to be the natural choice for such an introductory
text; quoting Veltman again: " ... the theory (meaning QFT), or
rather the succesful part (of it), is perturbation theory ...
Perturbation theory means Feynman diagrams ".

This book provides a clear logical frame that supports the
calculation machinery of perturbative QFT's and should be
recommended to any person willing to introduce himself/herself in
Quantum Field Theory as a first choice course book.


Taking into account that this is an introductory book, its
short extension (200 pages) its scope is limited to QED and no
serious attempt is made to treat non-abelian theories.

One minor (for me it is minor, since my english is also rather
poor) annoyance: Even I (my mother tonge is spanish) can see
that the writing style is not very good and that some of the used
expressions are nothing more that literal translations from dutch
into english.

cernoramam
it's a CERN yellow report from the 1970s sometime. this is the revision and printed version of it. he knows what he is doing, or at least the nobel commitee thought so when he got the prize with t'hooft. anyway it's called diagrammar and you can download it from the CERN site.

Reviews (2)

Fascinating
This is a wonderful book which shows how a classical field theory like General Relativity can be derived from a quantum field theory.It also points out the extreme difficulty of accomplishing this in the case ofgravity and ending up with a consistent, anomaly free theory.

Readersof this book will benefit from familiarity with both quantum field theoryand relativity as well as a certain amount of mathematical sophistication. Don't be fooled by the similarity of title to other "Feynman Lectureson..." because this book is based on an upper level graduate physicscourse and assumes the background of a typical PhD student inphysics.

Deep, complex and difficult going but well worth the effort tosee the elegance of the connection between General Relativity and QFT.

Reviews (3)

Great book
Love it so far. Brilliant insight into not just the men behind the theories - but also physics itself.

Superb overview of the development of QED...
This book is a superb overview of the development of QED. The slant is geared towards the major personalities involved in it's development. The key players of course were: Feynman, Schwinger, Dyson, and Tomonaga. The text is quite detailed and is directed towards the academic community and assumes a cursory knowledge of quantum mechanics. That being the case, I got lost in much of the math. However, I kept at it and got much out of the book. If you are a physics major then this book will be a jewel to own. What an experience to "see" the human mind come up with ideas which at first glance seem impossible but later turn out to be perfectly true. The writing is quite turgid as is the case with books put out by Princeton, but the material is just fantastic. If the math overwhelms you, as it did me, just get the main idea down and forge on. Later, if time and patience permits re-visit the portion that got you lost and try again. I did this but still am lost in many areas. Nevertheless, a great read!!

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Reviews (1)

Audio Volume #14 Feynman on Electricity & Magnetism PART ONE
THIS REVIEW IS FOR VOLUME 14 OF THE RECORDED AUDIO LECTURES ON TAPE - NOT THE "FEYNMAN LECTURES ON PHYSICS" BOOK AND NOT ANY OTHER AUDIO VOLUME DESPITE AMAZON'S PLACEMENT OF THIS REVIEW ON THE WRONG VOLUME PAGE. (the system also seems to miss-associate these reviews with the incorrect audio volumes.) THIS IS PART ONE OF TWO VOLUMES ON ELECTRICITY & MAGNETISM - VOLUME #15 IS PART TWO.

OK, that warning aside, the subject is Electrodynamics. The man is Feynman. Here's what you get:
Six hours of Feynman lecturing (in his characteristic idiosyncratic demeanor) to students at the California Institute of Technology during the early years of the 1960's. Yes folks, that's right: Six 1 hour lectures on six audio tapes covering the first six contiguous chapters from which volume two of the printed lectures was transcribed. The lectures also cover some serious mathematics (Differential & Vector Calculus). This is where owning a copy of the printed lectures comes in handy for following the lecture from his transcribed use of the massive University lecture hall chalk-boards. The only audio editing is from the publisher announcing the date, lecture title, and where each chapter subsection begins. It is interesting to hear the background noise of the students as they file in and out of the lecture hall and towards the end of each lecture. You also hear bells in the hallway signaling the end of the class or possibly the lunch break. The students enthusiastically demonstrate their appreciation of Professor Feynman's efforts by applauding him at the end of each lecture. Of course Professor Feynman makes use of the chalkboard which you wont have the advantage of seeing but you could keep a copy of the printed lectures on hand (separate purchase) to get whatever visuals you need from the transcribed illustrated diagrams which were published (I have done this and it's handy). Mostly I just listen to these tapes (I have a collection of over 72 taped lectures) on my one hour a day commute each day, over and over again. It's like I'm always in school with the great genius of Feynman every day!
This audio volume (#14) is Part 1 of 2. The next six contiguous lectures will be available in audio volume #15. By the way, I wrote the publisher (Perseus Books Group) and asked them when Part 2 would be available to which they promptly sent the helpful reply:
'Volumes 15 and 16 of the Audio Collection will be coming out this spring. Volume 15 (Feynman on Electricity and Magnetism, Part 2) contains sections on electrostatic energy, electricity in the atmosphere-including lightning and thunderstorms-magnetostatics, and the magnetic field. Volume 16 (Feynman on Electromagnetism) discusses the vector potential, laws of induction, and the Maxwell equations. According to our production schedule, both volumes should be available by April.'

Well anyhow, I thought that you'd like to see how these audio lectures correlate to the printed 'Lectures on Physics' by audiocassette to volume & chapter for each book:

Tape #1 is from the printed lectures Vol. II Chapter 1: ELECTROMAGNETISM (Sept. 27, 1962)
1.1Electrical forces
1.2Electric and Magnetic fields
1.3Characterizations of vector fields
1.4The laws of electromagnetism
1.5What are fields?
1.6Electromagnetism in science and technology

Tape #2 is from the printed lectures Vol. II Chapter 2: DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS OF VECTOR FIELDS (Oct. 1, 1962)
2.1Understanding physics
2.2Scalar and vector fields - T and h
2.3Derivatives of fields - the gradient
2.4The operator del
2.5Operators with del
2.6The differential equation of heat flow
2.7Second derivatives of vector fields
2.8Pitfalls

Tape #3 is from the printed lectures Vol. II Chapter 3: VECTOR INTEGRAL CALCULUS (Oct. 4, 1962)
3.1Vector integrals; the line integral of del Y
3.2The flux of a vector field
3.3The flux from a cube; Gauss' theorem
3.4Heat conduction; the diffusion equation
3.5The circulation of a vector field
3.6The circulation around a square; Stokes's theorem
3.7Curl-free and divergence-free fields
3.8Summary

Tape #4 is from the printed lectures Vol. II Chapter 4: ELECTROSTATICS (Oct. 8, 1962)
4.1Statics
4.2Coulomb's law; superposition
4.3Electric potential
4.4E=-del f
4.5The flux of E
4.6Gauss' law; divergence of E
4.7Field of a sphere of charge
4.8Field lines; equipotential surfaces

Tape #5 is from the printed lectures Vol. II Chapter 5: APPLICATION OF GAUSS' LAW (Oct. 11, 1962)
5.1Electrostatics is Gauss' law plus...
5.2Equilibrium in an electrostatic field
5.3Equilibrium with conductors
5.4Stability of atoms
5.5The field of a line charge
5.6A sheet of charge; a spherical shell
5.7A sphere of charge; a spherical shell
5.8Is the field of a point charge exactly 1/r^2
5.9The fields of a conductor
5.10The field in a cavity of a conductor

Tape #6 is from the printed lectures Vol. II Chapter 6: THE ELECTRIC FIELD IN VARIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES (Oct. 15, 1962)
6.1Equations of the electrostatic potential
6.2The electric dipole
6.3Remarks on vector equations
6.4The dipole potential as a gradient
6.5The dipole approximation for an arbitrary distribution
6.6The fields of charged conductors
6.7The method of images
6.8A point charge near a conducting plate
6.9A point charge near a conducting sphere
6.10Condensers: parallel plates
6.11High-voltage breakdown

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