6 ms·

I don't understand why everyone so much adore feynman lectures there are plenty of other prof. who explain much much better for example suskind

engineeringwoke 5y ago
Feynman is an engineer's physicist, and we're on an engineering board afaict
- TheGallopedHigh 5y ago
  That doesn’t make sense. Every physicist is an engineer and vice versa
  - karatinversion 5y ago
    Ever heard of string theory?
  - dev_tty01 5y ago
    I would say every physicist believes they are an engineer...
Grustaf 5y ago
Susskind is great, and he's very much inspired by Feynman. Of course there are plenty of good professors that will help you understand physics, but I haven't heard anyone lecture in such an interesting way, have you?
publicola1990 5y ago
Yes, I find Leon N Cooper was also very good at explaining physics. His 'Meaning as Structure of Modern Physics' is as good an resource for freshman physics as Feynman lectures. Also there are topics Feyman himself thought was covered hastily, if I recollect correctly, and that included thermodynamics.
beagle3 5y ago
My theory is something I call "The Feynman effect". Feynman has a talent of making the listener believe that they (the listener) understand everything at a very deep level. So it gives the feeling he's an amazing teacher -- and if you don't actually try to apply that knowledge, you might never notice that you're wrong. I realized that after reading his lecture on "the principle of least action" coming out with the feeling that I deeply understand (among other things) calculus of variations - a field I didn't even know existed until I read that. So I tried to use it -- and realized that, other than recreating Feynman's example, I can't really use it for anything. I shared the sentiment with others over lunch the next day (a couple of other undergrads and two graduate students), and they were all familiar with that feeling....
- MengerSponge 5y ago
  I wish I could frame this comment for every first-year student. The profound irony of the Feynman Lectures is that although they are revered as master works, the whole endeavor was a miserable failure. Feynman was teaching an intro sequence, and he delivered a lovely set of lectures that grad students and professors enjoyed. We still give newly minted physics majors a lovely bound copy of the Lectures, because some of us are in on the joke.
- d0mine 5y ago
  It depends on a person. For me the lectures deserve all the praise they've got and more. I've read Feynman lectures twice. First time in the secondary school -- it was above my head but it gave me an understanding, the right models to work with later. The second time I read it in the university after I'd already studied the topics by other means (through complex math using e.g., Landau and Lifshitz textbooks). Now, I could appropriate the full depth of the lectures. It is often useful to have several perspectives on a subject , to know it better in particular to solve complex problems (the more tools you can apply, the better).
  - beagle3 5y ago
    Oh, I definitely agree. I appreciate the perspective. The Feynman lectures are great at giving an intuition and perhaps a general framework for thought. What they don’t give you are tools; like you say, you had to learn them in other places before really appreciating the lecture. But those lectures do seem to leave many people with the feeling they also got the tools and not just the gist. They are enjoyable. They are informative. But they are not at a textbook level, even though they leave the impression that they are.
alisonkisk 5y ago
In particular, Feynman himself thought his lectures were a failed experiment. They are really more Feynman memorabilia and nerd status objects than used as educational resources, similar to TAOCP
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  The recording linked span nearly 3 years. Why would he consider them to be "a failed experiment"?
  - anon_tor_12345 5y ago
    he said it himself literally in the preface to the lectures "The question, of course, is how well this experiment has succeeded. My own point of view—which, however, does not seem to be shared by most of the people who worked with the students—is pessimistic. I don’t think I did very well by the students. When I look at the way the majority of the students handled the problems on the examinations, I think that the system is a failure. Of course, my friends point out to me that there were one or two dozen students who—very surprisingly—understood almost everything in all of the lectures, and who were quite active in working with the material and worrying about the many points in an excited and interested way. These people have now, I believe, a first-rate background in physics—and they are, after all, the ones I was trying to get at. But then, "The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.” (Gibbon)" https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_91.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_91.html
    - crispyambulance 5y ago
      I think his remarks need to be put in perspective. Compared to any other college lecturers, how do his lectures measure up? Sure, a couple dozen students who attended out of hundreds perfectly understood everything in the lectures and demonstrated it in exams to Feynman's unreasonably high standards. Does that mean that all of the rest failed to gain any substantial physics knowledge which was valuable in their academic or professional careers? I think not. Looking at the wikipedia entry for the lectures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physic...), it says that Feynman taught "the course" once. It's clearly a beefy 3-course sequence that was taught over the span of 3 years. Sounds like it could have been 1 semester a year for each of the three courses in the physics intro sequence. How many students is that? Somewhere in the low hundreds, I guess. 5-10% of the students with "perfect" scores could be "two dozen". That's not unusual and not a failure if larger fractions got a good-enough grounding in physics at Caltech to proceed. I think they did. Feynman's remarks, I think, are an elliptical self-deprecating way of saying the lectures didn't meet his own standards. That doesn't mean they were "a failure".

engineeringwoke 5y ago

Feynman is an engineer's physicist, and we're on an engineering board afaict

TheGallopedHigh 5y ago
That doesn’t make sense. Every physicist is an engineer and vice versa
- karatinversion 5y ago
  Ever heard of string theory?
- dev_tty01 5y ago
  I would say every physicist believes they are an engineer...

Grustaf 5y ago

Susskind is great, and he's very much inspired by Feynman. Of course there are plenty of good professors that will help you understand physics, but I haven't heard anyone lecture in such an interesting way, have you?

publicola1990 5y ago

Yes, I find Leon N Cooper was also very good at explaining physics. His 'Meaning as Structure of Modern Physics' is as good an resource for freshman physics as Feynman lectures. Also there are topics Feyman himself thought was covered hastily, if I recollect correctly, and that included thermodynamics.

beagle3 5y ago

My theory is something I call "The Feynman effect". Feynman has a talent of making the listener believe that they (the listener) understand everything at a very deep level. So it gives the feeling he's an amazing teacher -- and if you don't actually try to apply that knowledge, you might never notice that you're wrong. I realized that after reading his lecture on "the principle of least action" coming out with the feeling that I deeply understand (among other things) calculus of variations - a field I didn't even know existed until I read that. So I tried to use it -- and realized that, other than recreating Feynman's example, I can't really use it for anything. I shared the sentiment with others over lunch the next day (a couple of other undergrads and two graduate students), and they were all familiar with that feeling....

MengerSponge 5y ago
I wish I could frame this comment for every first-year student. The profound irony of the Feynman Lectures is that although they are revered as master works, the whole endeavor was a miserable failure. Feynman was teaching an intro sequence, and he delivered a lovely set of lectures that grad students and professors enjoyed. We still give newly minted physics majors a lovely bound copy of the Lectures, because some of us are in on the joke.
d0mine 5y ago
It depends on a person. For me the lectures deserve all the praise they've got and more. I've read Feynman lectures twice. First time in the secondary school -- it was above my head but it gave me an understanding, the right models to work with later. The second time I read it in the university after I'd already studied the topics by other means (through complex math using e.g., Landau and Lifshitz textbooks). Now, I could appropriate the full depth of the lectures. It is often useful to have several perspectives on a subject , to know it better in particular to solve complex problems (the more tools you can apply, the better).
- beagle3 5y ago
  Oh, I definitely agree. I appreciate the perspective. The Feynman lectures are great at giving an intuition and perhaps a general framework for thought. What they don’t give you are tools; like you say, you had to learn them in other places before really appreciating the lecture. But those lectures do seem to leave many people with the feeling they also got the tools and not just the gist. They are enjoyable. They are informative. But they are not at a textbook level, even though they leave the impression that they are.

alisonkisk 5y ago

In particular, Feynman himself thought his lectures were a failed experiment. They are really more Feynman memorabilia and nerd status objects than used as educational resources, similar to TAOCP

crispyambulance 5y ago
The recording linked span nearly 3 years. Why would he consider them to be "a failed experiment"?
- anon_tor_12345 5y ago
  he said it himself literally in the preface to the lectures "The question, of course, is how well this experiment has succeeded. My own point of view—which, however, does not seem to be shared by most of the people who worked with the students—is pessimistic. I don’t think I did very well by the students. When I look at the way the majority of the students handled the problems on the examinations, I think that the system is a failure. Of course, my friends point out to me that there were one or two dozen students who—very surprisingly—understood almost everything in all of the lectures, and who were quite active in working with the material and worrying about the many points in an excited and interested way. These people have now, I believe, a first-rate background in physics—and they are, after all, the ones I was trying to get at. But then, "The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.” (Gibbon)" https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_91.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_91.html
  - crispyambulance 5y ago
    I think his remarks need to be put in perspective. Compared to any other college lecturers, how do his lectures measure up? Sure, a couple dozen students who attended out of hundreds perfectly understood everything in the lectures and demonstrated it in exams to Feynman's unreasonably high standards. Does that mean that all of the rest failed to gain any substantial physics knowledge which was valuable in their academic or professional careers? I think not. Looking at the wikipedia entry for the lectures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physic...), it says that Feynman taught "the course" once. It's clearly a beefy 3-course sequence that was taught over the span of 3 years. Sounds like it could have been 1 semester a year for each of the three courses in the physics intro sequence. How many students is that? Somewhere in the low hundreds, I guess. 5-10% of the students with "perfect" scores could be "two dozen". That's not unusual and not a failure if larger fractions got a good-enough grounding in physics at Caltech to proceed. I think they did. Feynman's remarks, I think, are an elliptical self-deprecating way of saying the lectures didn't meet his own standards. That doesn't mean they were "a failure".