Tips on Physics: A Problem-Solving Supplement to the Feynman Lectures on Physics

by Richard P. Feynman, Michael A. Gottlieb, Ralph Leighton

This new volume contains four previously unpublished lectures that Feynman gave to students preparing for exams. With characteristic flair, insight and humor, Feynman discusses topics students struggle with and offers valuable tips on solving physics problems. An illuminating memoir by Matthew Sands who originally conceived The Feynman Lectures on Physics gives a fascinating insight into the history of Feynman’s lecture series and the books that followed. This book is rounded off by relevant exercises and answers by R. B. Leighton and R. E. Vogt, originally developed to accompany the Lectures on Physics.

Genres: Physics, Science, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Mathematics, Reference, Stem

162 pages, Hardcover

First published July 31, 2005

About the author

Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as work in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman was a joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, together with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime and after his death, Feynman became one of the most publicly known scientists in the world.

He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb and was a member of the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In addition to his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing, and introducing the concept of nanotechnology (creation of devices at the molecular scale). He held the Richard Chace Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at Caltech.

-wikipedia

See Ричард Фейнман

Reviews

[Saranya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Save me, Lord Feynman
🙏
╱|、
(˚ˎ 。7
|、˜〵
じしˍ,)ノ

My little sister is a big fan of lord Feynman. She recommended him to me. How does it feel like to being advised by your younger siblings? Well, age is just a number. And I love my sister's inspirational and intellectual talks:)

Okay, this was pretty good. But, I felt there could be more. The problem was that it was really short. And I wanted more of such examples. I didn't bother to go through the calculus part much. Just went through them once, as I face more problems with the 'thinking stuff'!

Last but not the least, I am highly grateful for Lord Feynman to have existed. I really, really wish I had met him irl. He is my idol now!

[John Orman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still remember one of the first Feynman Physics problems I worked on in the Supplemental Problems booklet of my freshman physics class. It was something like this:

"Long ago, a raindrop falls from the sky into a Paleozoic footprint of a T. Rex. Then, in 1963, you drink a glass of water. Estimate the number of water molecules from that Paleozoic raindrop you just swallowed."

Well, I eventually came up with an estimate that turned out to be not even close, off by many orders of magnitude. But I still recall the difficulty of Feynman Physics problems!

This book is a collection of Richard P. Feynman's insights into the nature of solving physics-related problems. Included are some of those brain-puzzling problems, a prelude to the forthcoming book, Exercises for the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

I really enjoyed the memoir by Matthew Sands, one of the co-authors of the Feynman Lectures on Physics books. It focuses on the background of the creation of the Lecture books and the many decisions that were made regarding the course Feynman taught at CalTech and the books that followed, authored by Feynman, Leighton, and Sands.

It was interesting that in talking to physics professors at various universities, Sands found that "most instructors did not consider that the Lectures suitable for use in their classes." Sometimes there was a fear that students would ask questions the teachers could not answer! The books were often used by graduate students as study aides.


In the Foreward, Ralph Leighton relates an anecdote in which Chinese soldiers waving Mao's Little Red Book are taunted by a drafted Indian physics student by the waving of the three red volumes of Feynman's Lectures on Physics!


A great read for anyone who has taken a course using the Lectures--or has just heard of them! Or anyone with an interest in the history of physics teaching!

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hey, I've found these recordings of some revision lectures that Feynman gave; do you think we should publish them?
But they're such a rambling set of contrived examples and they're more likely to confuse than illuminate. The way that Feynman works with numbers rather than symbols, and makes mistakes all the time and has to go back and correct. I mean it's an insight into his chaotic mind, but it's not a good example for undergraduates to follow.
No, but with Feynman's name on the cover, it's sure to sell. We could throw in that lecture on gyroscopes too, that never made it into the main series.
Hmm, still a bit thin. How about we interview some of the staff who were around at the time and pass it off as a scholarly work on physics pedagogy.
Still not enough, well I have these mechanics problems lying around. Let's add those in too.
Ker-ching.

The best adjective to describe this book is disappointing. Definitely 2* - not a book I am going to read again.

[Suaad Alsaggaf · Rating 3 out of 5]

l like Feynman phraseology
but,
I stuck in the last parts
I think it will be better understood visiually!

[Izzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Feynman my beloved!!!

[Andrei Bordeianu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gândire limpede ca apa de izvor, domnule! După asta mă ghidez!

[Edda Hobuss · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say? It's Feynman doing what he knows best. It is a companion reading to his lectures, so if you just want to clarify some topics go for it, if you want to go a bit deeper, get the lectures themselves. I also really appreciate the pep talk he gives in the beginning because studying physics is hard if you can't put your feelings aside for a bit.

[Jalaluddin Abdullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feynman's fans and so many of us scientists are grateful to have access to any paper or tape he produced. Why? He was bright, generous, and attentive, and he had that little vanity that we cherish because it is human and funny. We love the man the same way that you love the three musketeers when you are young. We love him because he had no respect for authority - in the sense that nobody could intimidate him or tell him what to do - because he always looked for the truth and most of all, because he remained curious all his life. This is the man who was only bored once in his life; he thought that dying was pretty boring.
If you never read any Feynman, do not start here, start with his great (serious stuff) The Feynman Lectures on Physics, boxed set: The New Millennium Edition or the stories he liked to tell (very funny stuff) Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think?
This little book introduces you to people who really liked him, so it is good. There are interesting comments from Feynman, for instance, he addresses the feelings of the students who have always been the brightest in their local high school and find out in college that there are brighter students still. For students: no-nonsense tips could save your bacon.

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very misleading title... It has the preface, the forward, the acknowledgement, the introduction, and the following chapters:
1. On the Origin of the Feynman Lectures - memoir by Matthew Sands
2. Interview with Feynman
3. Interview with Leighton
4. Interview with Vogt
5. Lecture A
6. Lecture B
7. Lecture C
8. Dynamic effects
9. selected exercises

Now why would anyone seeking tips on physics be bothered with the book? (That's a rhetoric question) If you are interested in how the Feynman lectures on physics were created, you may be bothered; or if you have the working knowledge of rotation in a rotating frame, aka the more torturing part of the Lagrangian mechanics course, and are still curious about gyroscopes, be bothered. Otherwise, most of the book will just be explanations of some problems with no clear assumptions or conclusions. They are like transcripts of lectures. There are no tips whatsoever. The conversation between Feynman and students are mostly pointless...

[Ron Joniak · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very short read, however Feynman presents us with some excellent tips for the freshman physicist and also gives us some insight into what learning under Feynman was like.

What I found most interesting was Feynman's differentiation technique that isn't often studied in school. It is a very powerful tool to handle awkward looking functions.

Plenty of practical examples are presented in the book and there is an entire chapter of exercises left for the reader to solve at the end.

[Isaak Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first chapter of this book provides some useful thoughts about triangulation due to the fact that you cannot memorize everything in physics. There is also a very useful differentiation method. The rest of the book is problem solving, which can be difficult to follow, but would be useful after learning the topics at hand.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

(I actually read the free online version.)

I really should've read this after FLP volume 1, but oh well. This may be of help in solving physics problems but mostly it just makes me wish I could've had Feynman as a professor!

[Steven Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great supplement to his lectures. You can hear him speak throughout the book as his jokes and personality are clearly shown. The supplement is rather short though. But there's plenty of practice at the end of the book.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting and a good companion to the lectures but wouldn't stand too well on its own.

[Cornelius O Horgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent !

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard P. Feynman was both a genius and fabulous educator whose lectures remain a critical resource for all physics students.

[Antony Monir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gyroscope. 4/5

[NickES345 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt much better after reading this book - it gave me reassurance that I was not alone in feeling uneasy about Feynman's Lectures in Physics. At the outset, Feynman himself questions if the lectures that gave rise to 'Tips on Physics' will be of any use to listeners/readers. Until I heard that and subsequently read what his collaborators (in the Lectures on Physics project) had to say, I thought I had been alone in feeling that Lectures in Physics was interesting in many places, but not something that I could actually use to learn physics basics. It was heartening to find out that I was far from the only one with that opinion.

That said, I still love reading everything Feynman. For me, his 'lectures'' are more akin to watching a master painter using the most basic of tools to create the most beautiful artwork. It's a nice respite from traditional physics texts - short journeys highlighting very specific applications that illustrate how a master can wield simple laws/equations to obtain deeper results. Fun excursions - and then one can go back to learning physics from a more traditional book/approach.

Sprinkled throughout the book are useful tidbits ('tips'). One that comes to mind is Feynman's mention of the simple rule for differentiating the product of several functions. Most calculus books introduce the product rule for the derivative of a product of 2 functions and don't mention this useful (and simply proved) extension to products of n functions. Feynman illustrates the rule with an example but somehow fails to mention the rationale for the rule (if F = f1*f2*...fn, then derivative of log(F) = F'/F = f1'/f1+f2'/f2+...+fn'/fn), multiply both sides through by F to get F' = F*(f1'/f1+...+fn/fn), which is not only simple, but gives one a reason/way to remember the formula. Oh well, I guess that part is math, not physics.

In summary, 'Tips' made me feel a whole lot better about not being able to actually learn physics from Lectures on Physics. I still love Feynman-isms and the wonderful example he set for how 'real' physicists attack problems. Just wish I had been told a few decades ago that 'Lectures' was not necessarily the true path to physics that I was told it was at that time.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is fantastic for undergrads! The undergrad lectures collected in the Feynman Lectures on Physics are enough to make any sane person question why the hell they're bothering with a physics major. The level of complexity is honestly grad level if you expect to read it with full comprehension. Luckily enough for the rest of us, this tidy little volume exists as a helpmate and confidence booster.

Collected within are four lectures that weren't part of the main sequence of lectures collected in the much celebrated introductory physics survey course from Caltech. The introduction to these lectures is more than enough to give the struggling student some confidence back again. Apparently, a bunch of the smartest kids in the country also had problems following Feynman and either performed poorly or felt so unconfident about their performance in the class that these problem-solving lectures and review sessions for laymen were crammed full of people. Every physics student can probably sympathize.

Here's what's great: Feynman and some of the other professors who ran the discussion sections put together a series of devious problems that are a lot more nuanced than they at first appear. Some have multiple solutions that show the versatility of the physical laws covered in your basic freshman survey series and to see them all worked out with step-by-step explanations from one of the greatest science teachers in the world makes lights turn on even for advanced students. The problem solving is far from dry, and the reader will take heart that Feynman himself humbly and self-deprecatingly admits to making several mistakes in these rather "trivial" problems. There is also an appendix loaded with supplemental problems for you to try. I think I'd recommend this single book over just about any other supplemental problem/solution guide out there for people who are either struggling with calculus-based physics or want to push themselves and test the depth of their understanding of the material. Give yourself the Caltech experience and see if you could have hanged with the best of the best.

[Matt Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

As sort of an addendum and miscellania for things left out of Feynman's lectures, this book is not the most exciting part of that series. The historical accounts of the lectures through interviews are interesting but not overflowing with insights. The extra lectures are fine, though you can tell why this was not included in the main lectures.
I have not done the problem sets yet and will probably update this once I have.

[J.R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't do the problems. Duh.

This was a nice piece of history. One of the interesting things about it is the limit of science at the time of the lectures was evident. So he will say things that are unknown, but have actually been proven since.

I might look into the problems or the book of problems them come from, but not yet.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Feynman's attempt at creating a personal narrative but honestly this book feels quite dated. Both in its content and in the maturity level. I wouldn't recommend this book for someone looking for help on physics but for someone looking for a work from Feynman.

[Nemo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well this little book disappointed me, I mean it won't help you much with problem solving in general and most of the material presented is very basic stuff. The exercises are very tough but there is plenty of hard exercises textbooks, nothing that can compared to Feynman's lectures.

[Firda · Rating 4 out of 5]

*not that the book is less excellent than other books by Feynman, it's just that the material was not the one I need ><*

[Beatrix Tung · Rating 5 out of 5]

What else can I say.

[Lochie Ferrier]

awesome.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good. I'd have loved to have been in his classes.

[Vance J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very entertaining and informative book. It especially gave insight to how the Feynman Lecture on Physics came to be. For those who may not know: this book is a compilation of four lectures that Feynman gave to his students at the end of the 1st semester of the course. They didn't really fit the program and so weren't included in the other volumes of the series. So in that sense, the book is NOT Feynman's on solving physics problems - except in the context of those four very specific lectures. At the end is a short appendix of some problems from across the lecture series, and I found those very interesting (I'll try some with my own students! :)