The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1961-1964) (opens in new tab)

If you enjoy Feynman's lectures as much as I do (he taught freshman physics when I went to Caltech!) I highly recommend his armchair series, "Fun to Imagine":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYg6jzotiAc

He's sitting at home in Pasadena, talking about stuff that comes to mind.

• Jiggling atoms who like to make friends with each other.

• Where do trees come from? (It's not the dirt.)

• Why don't your arms sink through the armrests of your chair?

• How do trains stay on the tracks?

It's an hour of fun science, and especially accessible for anyone who is curious about physics but doesn't enjoy all the equations.

Thanks for the link to the downloadable versions. I have the Feynman Lectures loaded on an old iPod and I find them to be an amazing sleep aid. This is not a criticism, they are engaging enough to take my mind off of whatever is keeping me up while also being baffling enough that I fall asleep during the extended sections of blackboard writing sounds. My current set of files is not as good as the recently re-edited Caltech set but I don't want an active Internet device by my bed. Unfortunately they occasionally lead to somewhat stressful dreams of being in college again. It's a risk I am generally willing to take.

> The atoms [in water] are 1 or 2×10−8 cm in radius. Now 10−8 cm is called an angstrom (just as another name), so we say they are 1 or 2 angstroms (Å) in radius. Another way to remember their size is this: if an apple is magnified to the size of the earth, then the atoms in the apple are approximately the size of the original apple.

This is one of my favourite Feynman analogies, right at the beginning of these lectures. He had such a remarkable ability to transpose concepts into more understandable forms.

>However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read, look at and listen to online, and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion of the book The Feynman Lectures on Physics, its photos or tape recordings, for any purpose.

What the heck, why not just make them available for download?

So stupid, this is some of the best information in the world and should be shared as widely as possible. An institution of higher learning shouldn't be concerned with tightly controlling how knowledge is disseminated outside of the institution. Especially old things from the 60's like this.

Wow. This is a beautifully lightweight browser textbook. It has essentially everything I'd expect. Good math typesetting, customizable margin and font with simple javascript (I'm guessing I didn't check).

Envisioning a responsive open source browser textbook is pretty easy, I'm glad someone with cachet like Caltech is providing a role model. Hopefully every important textbook will eventually be as accessible as this one is.

"This paper reports my memories of being a beginning graduate student in physics at Caltech and working on the team producing The Feynman Lectures on Physics" : https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.05210.pdf

Chapter 22: Algebra is a treasure. Clarified a bunch of relationships for me.

https://feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_22.html

Audio Version:

- MP4/Vorbis/MP3 downloads. https://archive.org/details/feynman-lectures-on-physics-audi...

- Web Player and Original Source. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/flptapes.html

Previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27322636

It’s on my bucket list to read through these lectures and grok them. Maybe it will be a retirement project? While we are talking about this, I feel like I need to brush up on my math. Does anyone know what level of math is required to work through these?

Is there any benefit to a layman working their way through this? Or is it only relevant to studying/passing an exam?

I heard that Feynman's lectures weren't written entirely by Feynman, but were actually a collaboration between a bunch of physicists. Is that true? Where can I read about the history of this aspect?

(It appears in the footnotes Feynman's Lectures on Computation, toward the end of the book. https://theswissbay.ch/pdf/Gentoomen%20Library/Extra/Richard...)

Reading through the lectures, you get the sense that it's superhuman to be able to write all of them. Once someone mentioned that it wasn't only Feynman doing the writing, it made a bit more sense.

What is the best way to make an offline copy?

A big pile of previous discussions:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

It's great to see this all in one place. The text follows the audio reasonably well, and the UX is spartan and functional. Is there a version that includes videos of the lectures as well?

to those thinking about using these as your intro to physics, I would think again. Its common sentiment among the physics crowd that these are nice to go through after you understand the concepts, not as an introduction. Usually your junior year summer go through them for fun if you have the time

Interesting, Is there any requirement what I should understand, before taking on those lectures?

Is there a description anywhere of what's covered in each lecture?

Nice!

I bought the books decades ago and lost them, decades ago. :\

Where are these people now? Not solving the problems at the universe, making money at Meta I suspect