Description
It was Richard Feynman’s outrageous and scintillating method of teaching that earned him legendary status among students and professors of physics. From 1961 to 1963, Feynman delivered a series of lectures at the California Institute of Technology that revolutionized the teaching of physics. In Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, taken from these famous Lectures on Physics, Feynman delves into one of the most revolutionary discoveries in twentieth-century physics: Einstein’s theory of relativity. The idea that the flow of time is not a constant, that the mass of an object depends on its velocity, and that the speed of light is a constant no matter what the motion of the observer, at first seemed shocking to scientists and laymen alike. But as Feynman shows, these tricky ideas are not merely dry principles of physics, but things of beauty and elegance.
No one — not even Einstein himself — explained these difficult, anti-intuitive concepts more clearly, or with more verve and gusto, than Feynman. Filled with wonderful examples and clever illustrations, Six Not-So-Easy Pieces is the ideal introduction to the fundamentals of physics by one of the most admired and accessible physicists of all time.
Genius is a word over used. It should be left for the very few, Mozart, Beethoven, Socrates, Netwon. Einstein, and yes, Feynman.
These lectures contain complicated ideas, and even if you struggle to follow the math, Feynman moves beyond the math to explain in simple terms.
Reading this book is a little bit like being at a Feynman lecture(*). It holds your attention, and everything seems to follow logically, but when you get to the end of the chapter you’re left feeling a little bit disoriented. “Wait, did that really make sense all the way through?”
Basically, if you’re a physics dilettante like me, you’re going to have to read each chapter twice.
(*) I was privileged to attend two, one in my Freshman year, one in my Sophomore year.
Bought as a present, was thrilled with this book
When I was a boy, our advanced math teacher said (something to the effect that) only a handful of people understood Special Relativity when Einstein first came up with it. So I had the impression that Special Relativity is something difficult to understand. But thanks to this book by Feynman, I think anyone can understand Special Relativity with a little effort. (It’s probably easier for people with high school math, but I suspect it’s possible to understand Special Relativity even without high school math.)
That said, I do have some background in high school math, and I read the book twice. (Making written notes the second time.) And admittedly, I probably haven’t understood everything about Special Relativity. But I do feel that I understand Special Relativity enough to be able to explain what it is (and why it’s true) to someone else (who is interested).
Thank you, Mr Feynman, for taking the trouble! And thank you to the editors and publishers for making Mr Feynman’s work available to the general public.
I wish I could have had access to Dr Feynman when I was a young engineering student. Too late now having been retired for 26years but still enjoy reading books like this. Bring on more!