The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume III

Dear Feynman Lectures Forum Members,

Since the release of the free online edition of FLP Vol. I in September many of you have written to ask whether we will publish the other two volumes of FLP online. Many have also asked whether we intend to publish PDF editions of FLP that can be read offline. In fact we originally planned to publish all three volumes online when our PDF editions became available, so we could use the release of the online edition to promote sales of the PDFs, which help support our activities. However, that plan didn't materialize for two reasons: (1) the people hired to do the LaTeX->HTML conversion only completed Vol. I, and (2) our publisher had some technical problems that delayed the publication of our PDF editions.

Today I am writing today to inform you that I have been working on the conversion of FLP Vols. II and III into HTML, and I finished Volume III yesterday, so I have just published it. Please check it out at www.feynmanlectures.info/flp. You may notice some new behavior in the floating menu's navigational controls, which now function as follows when the floating menu appears over a Volume's Table of Contents: the next/last buttons cycle through the tables of contents of the three volumes, and the "up" button takes you to the home page of the edition. (When the floating menu appears over a chapter, the navigational controls function as previously: "next/last" cycle through the chapters of the volume and "up" takes you to the table of contents.)

I also wish to inform you that our PDF editions have (finally!) appeared for sale online; you can now find them listed by our other publications, with links to retailers, on the Feynman Lectures Website Buy page (www.feynmanlectures.info/docroot/buy). Please note that while sales of the printed books benefit Caltech and Basic Books, only sales of electronic editions benefit 'The eFLP Group' (myself and Rudolf Pfeiffer), creators of the New Millennium Edition's LaTeX manuscript, who bring you the free online edition of FLP. So, if you want to help support our efforts, please buy the PDFs!

Finally, I want to give you a "heads up" to check out the Books & Arts section in the upcoming December 5th edition of Nature (International weekly journal of science), where there will be a very nice two-page spread about The Feynman Lectures on Physics written by Rob Phillips (Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics and Biology at Caltech).

I hope you enjoy FLP Vol. III. It is my personal favorite of the three volumes! [Regarding Volume II: 10 (out of 52) chapters remain to be converted to HTML. I'm working on it as time permits, and am not sure how long it will take to finish -- hopefully not too long.]

Best regards, Mike Gottlieb --- www.feynmanlectures.info

P.S. Caveat Reader: In converting a large and complex book like FLP from one format to another, inadvertent errors are inevitably introduced. Moreover, you are most likely reading the online edition on a platform I don't have (since I only have 3: an iPad, a PC and a Mac) so you may see things I don't. If you see anything that looks wrong in the online edition -- suspicious-looking text or equations, broken links, or other errata -- we would greatly appreciate it if you would push the "contact us" button on the floating menu, and inform us of the problem. (For this free online edition, we could not afford to hire proofreaders. So, you get to be the proofreaders ;->!

P.P.S. Once again the Simple Machines Forum Software's Newsletter Send function terminated in error, forcing me to re-send this message using gmail. I apologize if you received multiple copies.

I'd love to be able to buy MP3s of his lectures for download. I have been unable to find them online, does anyone here have any pointers?

About a decade ago, via my public library, I listened to Graham and Dodd's Securities Analysis and subjectively it seemed like it was about 2 hours long (on cassette tapes?) because they didn't bother narrating the equations and diagrams and graphs.

I would imagine a physics lecture audio experience would be similar.

Lovely work. Thank you.

I agree; his comments really do cover why I am a huge fan of them. Feynman's lectures are less about the actual physics, and more a tour de force in how he approaches problem solving and intuition of problems. He just uses physics to deliver it (and in doing so, gives you an excellent primer to a large amount of physics topics at a level that an interested party could find accessible).

Having done some tertiary level physics, I've covered much of the content but I still find the Volumes an excellent read not only as a refresher on the subject matter but also a demonstration of how to really nut out a problem and think about it in a way that supports a fuller understanding of the principles at play.

Feynman lamented that his lectures, in and of themselves, were a failure when he presented them to the Caltech classes. I think that misses their true worth of teaching the prospective student how to think through problems. That's a skill that is incredibly valuable to learn and improve upon no matter what your level of physics understanding or indeed what discipline you choose to pursue. To me, the material is largely secondary to that.