Will Susskind's Particle Physics Lectures Result in a New Book?

[DanP]

The lectures from Susskind's lectures on particle physics which he hold this fall started to be available on iTunesU on Stanford;s home and youtube.

Currently there are 2 on youtube and 3 on itunesU.

 

[Sankaku]

Thanks for the heads-up. Appreciated!

 

[WiFO215]

This guy's accent reminds me of snaggle-puss. I keep having this feeling he's going to say "Heavens to murgatroyd! Exit, stage left!"

 

[matonski]

Awesome! I've been obsessively watching this whole series lately. I love them. He's made clear so many concepts I found difficult the first time through. http://web.mac.com/clinton_lewis/Welkin_Sky/Susskind_Lectures_List.html is a website with notes for each lecture in the series.

 

[Frimus]

The lectures from Susskind's lectures on particle physics which he hold this fall started to be available on iTunesU on Stanford;s home and youtube.

Currently there are 2 on youtube and 3 on itunesU.

The third lecture of a three-quarter sequence is now on youtube

 

[Gear300]

The fourth lecture

 

[DanP]

5th installment is already on Stanford's iTunesU

 

[Frimus]

Lecture 5 | New Revolutions in Particle Physics: Basic Concepts on YouTube

 

[Domenicaccio]

Thanks a lot!

I am currently reading my first book by Susskind, the easy and highly enjoyable "The Black Hole War", and I am very eager to follow these lessons!

 

[Haelfix]

I've watched about an hour or so of the lectures, skipping around here and there. I sort of prefer Coleman's lectures (alternatively if you can find A Zee or B Greene field theory lectures via your university, do so.. they were filmed and available to certain universities). For one, there are less interuptions and stupid questions, and for two motivating field theory here is done super rapidly and with notation that is quite confusing (he didn't bother to do a lot of the problems in his notes first, and he ends up with multiple values and ambiguities for the letters i, j, n and m).

I much prefer the initial qm and entanglement series, which were brilliantly taught.

 

[dx]

I've watched about an hour or so of the lectures, skipping around here and there. I sort of prefer Coleman's lectures ...

Susskind's and Coleman's lectures are intended for completely different audiences. Susskind's lectures are for people who "know or once knew a bit of calculus", while Coleman's are advanced graduate lectures at Harvard.

 

[Haelfix]

They both have the same requirements essentially, namely having taken some special relativity and quantum courses (say the initial 2 classes in the series).

Coleman's lectures are selfcontained, in the sense that if you have quantum mechanics then you can take his class. Susskind has the same requirements, he just handwaves it through with a lot less math and rigor.

So even though Susskinds course is easier, I suspect I would be hopelessly confused if I took it without already knowing the material.

I've always been a little skeptical about teaching 'fun' material before its natural time, somewhat akin to the efforts of certain people to teach classes in supersymmetry or superstring theory to undergraduates. Yes you can do it, and yes it might even work to a degree, but there's still something very fishy in Denmark at the end of the day and I think as a student I would have been frustrated.

 

[dx]

Yes, I agree with you about teaching exciting and modern stuff too early, before people are in a position to understand it, but Susskind can be excused for this since he's not actually teaching undergraduates or people who are going to be physicists. He's teaching physics ameateurs and enthusiasts (some over 90 years old, I hear) who are not satisfied by popular science books.

 

[matonski]

6th and 7th are on iTunes U

 

[matonski]

All 10 are on there now plus 2 more from the next quarter.

 

[czelaya]

Thanks a lot!

I am currently reading my first book by Susskind, the easy and highly enjoyable "The Black Hole War", and I am very eager to follow these lessons!

That was the first book I read by Susskind. I was thinking he was going to be another Briane Green. I wouldn't say he was better but I enjoyed his explanations far more. I was also hesitant that there would be new information covered. There was a lot I learned, considering I've read almost all the books by Hawkings, Green, Reese, and so forth.

 

[matonski]

I've realized that its much better to watch Leonard Susskind's videos on double speed. He talks pretty slowly that double speed is just a little fast, which is fine. When I need it, 1.5 speed actually sounds like normal talking speed. I use VLC media player and there's an option to play faster.

 

[matonski]

All of the the spring quarter is now up as well on iTunes U.

 

[bcarpent1228]

I am one of those "amateurs", (not 90, but a young 70). who found Prof. Susskind lectures quite informative. At one point in the lectures (quantum entanglement) there was a survey of both ages and experience. I was about the middle, good math training and experience but little physics, mostly engineers, geologists, etc.

I enjoyed the side discussions as this gave me a good insight on how physicists approached problems.

I found the math fairly elementary but the "solutions" suspect - especially in discrete summations (we "know" the answer is about "this" so we assume the extreme terms "cancel each other" --- or just ignoring high order terms, etc.). I suppose that is where Feynman's expression "hold your nose and calculate" came from :) :) :)

I do not think the lectures would be useful for physics majors - but very useful for me.

 

[Laurent Stern]

I'm a 38 years old French guy that got a non-theorical physics masters degree ten years ago but I worked in IT since. I guess it qualifies me as an amateur like bcarpent1228.
Does someone know if a book is supposed to emerge from these lectures ? It would complement Penrose's Road to Reality mathematician approach.