Which Feynman Lectures edition is best

In summary: I can't go on. In summary, the New Millennium Edition is the best edition to get, and the audio tapes are interesting but not necessary.
  • #1
blaughli
93
1
I just took Electromagnetism and I want to solidify my understanding of the material. I want to order the Feynman Lectures, but I've heard some complaints about different editions (unnecessary edits, quality of print, etc...). Which edition(s) is the best? Also, should I get the audio tapes? And are Feynman's Tips good too?


As an aside, I also just took Circuit Analysis, and I would also like to solidify my understanding of that material too. Any good books to read to help that effort (I really didn't like my course's book, Engineering Circuit Analysis, very much.

Thanks
 
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  • #2
blaughli said:
I just took Electromagnetism and I want to solidify my understanding of the material. I want to order the Feynman Lectures, but I've heard some complaints about different editions (unnecessary edits, quality of print, etc...)
Well, any complaints about unnecessary edits surely refers to the Definitive Edition of the Feyman Lectures, which is blue in color. If you want an edition without all those edits, get the books with the red cover instead.
 
  • #3
lugita15 said:
Well, any complaints about unnecessary edits surely refers to the Definitive Edition of the Feyman Lectures, which is blue in color. If you want an edition without all those edits, get the books with the red cover instead.

I think you may have editions mixed up. My (hardback) copies of the Definitive Edition are all red.
 
  • #4
Check out this post

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=378535

where the current editor says that he expects a new enhanced edition to come out some time this year. You might want to PM him and see if the date is set, and whether you want to wait for it.
 
  • #5
I want to order the Feynman Lectures, but I've heard some complaints about different editions (unnecessary edits, quality of print, etc...)

All of the edits made in The Definitive Edition and The New Millennium Edition of The Feynman Lectures on Physics were made to correct errors. All corrections were carefully reviewed and approved by Caltech, under the supervision of Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus. If you have any questions about the necessity for these corrections. I suggest that you review them yourself; You can find them posted on the FLP Errata page at www.feynmanlectures.info. If, after reviewing the corrections, you feel any of them should not have been made, you can write to me about it, and if you can convince me and Caltech that you are right, we will change it back!

Note that for The New Millennium Edition we created an entirely new (electronic) manuscript, and besides correcting a lot of errors, we also improved the typography and many of the figures, expanded (and unified) the indexes, and added a symbol table. Unfortunately, we also introduced some new typos - a little under one per lecture, on average - those typos are being corrected in the second printing, which will be an inexpensive paperback edition, available as a set or in individual volumes -- that printing will happen sometime in July, I think. (Of course we will also correct typos in the hardback... but that will not be reprinted until late this year.)

Which edition(s) is the best?

The New Millennium Edition is the most accurate and the most complete. The first printing, as noted above, was not perfect, but we are correcting the typos in the 2nd printing (which is the best we can do).

Also, should I get the audio tapes?

The tapes are interesting to listen to, and fun, but some of them - especially the more advanced ones - are hard to follow without being able to see what Feynman was doing (showing slides, performing demonstrations, and particularly, writing on his blackboards - not being able to see the blackboards makes following the more mathematical parts very difficult... though sometimes this can be overcome by following along in the books). Also, you will find that, if you compare the recordings of the lectures to the corresponding lectures in the books, they are markedly different. What you get in the books is a kind of "refined Feynman" - clarified, sometimes corrected, and occasionally supplemented, by Feynman's two co-authors Sands and Leighton. (A straight transcription of Feynman would be almost unreadable. Leighton used to half-jokingly call his job, "Translating Feynmanese into English." Only ONE lecture in all of FLP is "almost verbatim" and that is chapter 19 of Volume II, on The Principle of Least Action, a subject dear to Feynman's heart.)

And are Feynman's Tips good too?

Well, of course, I think TIPS is good. :rolleyes: But I admit it could be better, and we are working on that. The main shortcoming of the first edition, in my opinion, is that it only includes about 80 exercises, covering (rather sparsely) the material in the first 20 chapters of FLP Vol I. This is okay if you are just reading the book casually, but if you are planning to study physics from FLP (which lacks exercises), it's not enough; Exercises are needed for the rest of the material in FLP, and we are adding those now, about 900 of them, with answers. These were the exercises given to Caltech students, in Feynman's class and/or subsequent Caltech classes where FLP was used as the textbook; The Volume I exercises were made up by many people (a substantial number coming from Robert Leighton), however about 1/2 of the E&M (Vol II) exercises and about 3/4 of the QM (Vol III) exercises were invented by Feynman himself. (Don't ask me when the new edition of TIPS is going to be published - I don't know yet. We are still in the early stages of putting it together. So... probably not until next year.)

Mike Gottlieb
Editor, The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Coauthor, Feynman's Tips on Physics
www.feynmanlectures.info
 
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  • #6
Thanks everyone, thanks Mr. Gottlieb.

Well, I guess it's the Milennium Edition for me. It would be awesome to have the TIPs too, but it sounds like i'll have to wait until next year for the new and improved version. Good luck with that, hope it comes soon!

I'm mostly looking for a review of what I just learned in EM, and I'll also be reviewing 1st semester physics. More problems would be great, but the EM stuff is so conceptual that just reading will be good.

Any other resource suggestions for a guy who is falling in love with physics but feels bound to be an engineer for practical purposes?
 
  • #7
Wait, you mean the Definitive Edition was not definitive? Lying weasels!
 
  • #8
Daverz said:
Wait, you mean the Definitive Edition was not definitive? Lying weasels!

Around the time the name "Definitive Edition" was agreed on, shortly before it was published in 2005 by Pearson Addison-Wesley, Ralph Leighton and I established the Feynman Lectures Website, which is mentioned in Kip Thorne's preface to the Definitive Edition:

"... Feynman was uncomfortably aware of this error, and of others. In correspondence with the publisher in 1975, he refers to “errors of physics in Volumes II and III that are more than just typographical.” I do not know the other errors. Finding them is a challenge for future readers! To this end, Michael Gottlieb is creating a web site, www.feynmanlectures.info, on which all errata corrected in this Edition will be listed, along with any new errata found by future readers."​

So, we were fully aware that the first printing of the Definitive Edition was not "definitive" in the sense that we expected more errata to be discovered. We expected the newly discovered errata to be corrected in future printings of the Definitive Edition, so that, over time, it would become definitive. However, that is not what happened.

When it was time for the Definitive Edition's 4th printing, in 2006, we had collected about 350 new errata (many of which came from one very careful reader, Dr. Rudolph Pfieffer, then a researcher at the University of Vienna); Caltech checked through these, and the approved corrections were sent to the publisher to be made in the 4th printing. When the page proofs for the 4th printing came back from the printer, we found that only about 80 of the corrections that we specified had been implemented. We were informed corrections had been made only to pages that had been corrected in the first printing, because of the expense. You see, the old FLP source existed as (50+ year old) photonegatives that were used on an offset press to print the books (1960's technology!), so changing even a single letter on a page meant that the whole page (and perhaps more pages, if there was overflow) had to completely re-typeset (which is an expensive process requiring the services of at least two typesetters and five proofreaders, not to mention the people who manage them). On the other hand, the pages that had already been re-typeset for the first printing, which existed in electronic format, could be corrected cheaply. That was the "raison d'être" for the creation of the new (LaTeX/Postscript) manuscript. Between 2006 and 2010, while we were developing and promoting the new manuscript, the Feynman Lectures Website collected and documented more than 600 additional errata (contributed by 50 people, though the bulk of them were found, again, by Rudolf Pfeiffer, this time, in the course of converting FLP to LaTeX). Caltech checked these errata, and the approved corrections were implemented in the new manuscript, which was used to print the New Millennium Edition (published by Perseus Basic Books in 2010).

Whether or not the final error in FLP will be corrected in the New Millennium Edition, it is hard to say; Publishers create new editions of books from time to time, for various reasons. However, at least I feel confident that the name "New Millennium" will remain true for at least another few centuries! :wink:

Mike Gottlieb
www.feynmanlectures.info
 
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  • #9
So the latest edition has been fully digitized, and all the errors found have been corrected? The next printed version will be the most correct?

As for the TIPS, you said don't ask when, so I'll just hope it's soon.
 
  • #10
blaughli said:
So the latest edition has been fully digitized,

Yes. The manuscript from which the New Millennium Edition is made is written in LaTeX. The drawn figures are vector graphics in Postscript or PDF format, and the photos are JPGs or PNGs. From this source we generate PDF files, which we give to the publisher - they tweak those files a bit (without changing the content, only adjusting page size, contrast levels of photos, etc. as required by the printer's electronic press), and then give them to the printer, who sends us page proofs (also PDFs) that we check (to make sure corrections have been implemented), before the books are printed.

and all the errors found have been corrected?

All corrections approved by Caltech (~1165 corrections since we started correcting FLP errata in 2005) have been made in the new manuscript. There are other corrections on our list that may or may not be made in future printings, pending Caltech's approval. (These newly reported errata are posted on the FLP Errata page at www.feynmanlectures.info.)
The next printed version will be the most correct?

The only difference between the next printing (of the paperback, in, I think, July) and the current (first, hardback) printing (other than the covers) is the correction of about 80 typos we inadvertently introduced when we converted FLP to LaTeX. (These typos are posted on the FLP Errata page at www.feynmanlectures.info.)

Mike Gottlieb
www.feynmanlectures.info
 
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  • #11
Since you've now typeset the Feynman Lectures in LaTeX, do you have any plans to release them as ebooks? Also, it would be nice to have some kind of multimedia experience which would provide visual aids and display the relevant equations while you listen to the audio tapes.
 
  • #12
codelieb said:
Around the time the name "Definitive Edition" was agreed on,

Mike, I realize that the "Definitive" description was probably just marketing, and I was just teasing. It's better to read the books than worry about whether one has the latest and greatest edition. But I am looking forward to the expanded "Tips". I had a couple of the previous problem books, and they had some very tough problems in them.
 
  • #13
lugita15 said:
Since you've now typeset the Feynman Lectures in LaTeX, do you have any plans to release them as ebooks? Also, it would be nice to have some kind of multimedia experience which would provide visual aids and display the relevant equations while you listen to the audio tapes.

We are currently working on (1) versions of FLP compatible with ebook readers, and (2) an enhanced multimedia version that includes pictures and recordings of Feynman giving the original FLP lectures.

Have you seen the http://www.basicfeynman.com" [Broken] .

Mike Gottlieb
www.feynmanlectures.info
 
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  • #14
Daverz said:
... I am looking forward to the expanded "Tips". I had a couple of the previous problem books, and they had some very tough problems in them.

The Exercises in the new edition of TIPS come from three sources: The Vol I exercises are from (1969) 'Exercises in Introductory Physics' (EIP) by (FLP coauthor) Leighton and Vogt, who taught the FLP course at Caltech for a decade. EIP includes almost all of the exercises that were published Caltech's (1963) 'Exercises for the Feynman Lectures on Physics' (EFLP) Vol I, plus a lot more exercises that were made up later. The Vol II and Vol III exercises in the new edition of TIPS come from (1964-65) EFLP Vols II & III, which were originally published without answers; We are supplying answers this time around (plus a few new problems, and some worked-out solutions).

Mike Gottlieb
www.feynmanlectures.info
 
  • #15
Hello, everyone.

In previous messages on this forum (and elsewhere) I announced a plan to publish a new edition of Feynman's Tips on Physics that would include an additional ~900 exercises (with answers). That plan has now been scrapped. Instead, a paperback edition of Feynman's Tips on Physics will be produced (identical to the first edition, though with the possible addition of more historical material about FLP), and a separate volume of (~1000) exercises will also be produced (title TBD; I favor "Exercises for the Feynman Lectures on Physics").

I am hoping that the new edition of TIPS will be published by the end of this year, and that the exercise book will be published by the middle of next year... but it's hard to predict.

Mike Gottlieb
www.feynmanlectures.info
 
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  • #16
I was excited to learn of the plan to release the original audio tapes of the Feynman Lectures with pictures of the visual aids and what he wrote on the blackboard. I've long had a dream of "auditing the class" by listening to the lectures two per week as they were originally delivered, but got lost when I tried it because I couldn't see what he was showing. Is there any update on when the Enhanced Electronic Edition will be available and how much it will cost?
 
  • #17
mlitzky said:
I was excited to learn of the plan to release the original audio tapes of the Feynman Lectures with pictures of the visual aids and what he wrote on the blackboard. I've long had a dream of "auditing the class" by listening to the lectures two per week as they were originally delivered, but got lost when I tried it because I couldn't see what he was showing. Is there any update on when the Enhanced Electronic Edition will be available and how much it will cost?

So far, the only kind of Enhanced Electronic Edition we have managed to publish is an iBooks textbook version of "Six Easy Pieces." We may eventually make similar iBooks textbooks out of "Six Not So Easy Pieces" and "Feynman's Tips on Physics," but there is no plan to make the entire FLP in that format. My original proposal (which you can see demonstrated by Adam Cochran in this video) is an Acrobat mutlimedia-enhanced PDF, which looks just like the book but with small icons in the margins that you can click on to see photos or hear audio; the photos and audio UI come up in separate windows, and all windows operate independently, so that you can read the book, browse the photos, and listen to the audio simultaneously (which is not possible in an iBooks textbook). I made half a dozen chapters of FLP in the PDF format, but our new publisher, Basic Books, doesn't seem interested in publishing them, and they own the rights to the FLP photos and audio. So, the answer to your question is: I don't know.

Mike Gottlieb
www.feynmanlectures.info
 
  • #18
codelieb said:
So far, the only kind of Enhanced Electronic Edition we have managed to publish is an iBooks textbook version of "Six Easy Pieces." We may eventually make similar iBooks textbooks out of "Six Not So Easy Pieces" and "Feynman's Tips on Physics," but there is no plan to make the entire FLP in that format. My original proposal (which you can see demonstrated by Adam Cochran in this video) is an Acrobat mutlimedia-enhanced PDF, which looks just like the book but with small icons in the margins that you can click on to see photos or hear audio; the photos and audio UI come up in separate windows, and all windows operate independently, so that you can read the book, browse the photos, and listen to the audio simultaneously (which is not possible in an iBooks textbook). I made half a dozen chapters of FLP in the PDF format, but our new publisher, Basic Books, doesn't seem interested in publishing them, and they own the rights to the FLP photos and audio. So, the answer to your question is: I don't know.

Mike Gottlieb
www.feynmanlectures.info

Thanks for the quick reply. Ah well, it's still informative listening to Feynman speak and following along in the printed book.
 

1. What are the differences between the different editions of the Feynman Lectures?

There are three editions of the Feynman Lectures: the original 1964 edition, the 1970 edition, and the 2010 edition. The main difference between them is the level of mathematical detail included. The 1964 edition is the most comprehensive and includes more advanced mathematical concepts, while the 1970 and 2010 editions have simplified the mathematical content to make it more accessible for non-mathematical readers.

2. Which edition of the Feynman Lectures is the most recommended for students?

The 2010 edition is typically recommended for students, as it strikes a balance between mathematical rigor and accessibility. It also includes updated content and explanations to reflect current scientific understanding.

3. Are the Feynman Lectures suitable for self-study or are they better used as a supplement to a course?

The Feynman Lectures are suitable for both self-study and as a supplement to a course. However, they may be more challenging for self-study as they do not include exercises or problem sets. It is recommended to use them in combination with other resources for a comprehensive understanding of the topics.

4. Is it necessary to read all three editions of the Feynman Lectures?

No, it is not necessary to read all three editions. The 2010 edition is the most updated and comprehensive version, so it is generally recommended to start with this edition. However, some readers may choose to read the original 1964 edition for a more in-depth understanding of the mathematical concepts.

5. Can the Feynman Lectures be understood by non-scientists?

The Feynman Lectures are written at a level that assumes some prior knowledge of physics and mathematics. However, the 1970 and 2010 editions have simplified the content to make it more accessible for non-scientists. It may still be challenging for those without a background in science, but with dedication and effort, it is possible to understand the concepts presented in the lectures.

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