Comment by fao_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fao_ | Hacker News Reader

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Feynman's lectures of physics are good for layman explanations, however they quickly feel lacking without the maths background, which you can fill in with The Theoretical Minimum. There's actually a video lecture series of the Theoretical Minimum series that you might find more approachable, that is if you haven't heard of it: https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=189C0DCE90CB6D81 (Here for the general relativity playlist: https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6C8BDEEBA6BDC78D, and here for the full list of playlists: http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses/archive)

You say you haven't heard from anyone who has used it to go from zero to say, general relativity. You might want to look into the adult alumni of the class.

EDIT: You might also find another HN post interesting, it's currently at the top of HN classic: "Learning classical mechanics through Haskell", here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16453192

(And a direct link to "Classical Mechanics via Scheme", https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/...)

A small note. The "Theoretical Minimum" is not just a book, it's also a website with video lectures for the complete material.

See: http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses

I... I already linked to that?

Feynman's lectures were delivered to an audience of graduates and faculty who had signed up for an introductory course because Feynman was teaching it. Reading the Feynman lectures without the math background will end up confusing you horribly - I know this because I've found them not-exactly-light reading even though I already (supposedly) know what they're about!

The introductory physics course for which Feynman lectured in 1961-63 is part of Caltech's core curriculum, required of all undergraduate students. It was taken by the entire freshman class in 1961-62, and the same people, then sophomores, in 1962-63. The course consists of 3 parts: lectures, recitation sections, and labs. The recitation sections and labs are mandatory, but the lectures are not, and many Caltech students - particularly those who do not understand English well - choose not to attend all the lectures. Attrition in Feynman's lectures was typical for this course: an average of about 10%-20% of the students did not attend any given lecture. However, I would like to inform the poster that graduate students and faculty do not "sign up" for this course - that is not possible. Some graduate students and a few faculty members sometimes attended Feynman's lectures, almost all of whom were leading recitation sections or working in the course's labs. The ratio of undergraduate students to others who attended Feynman's lectures was very large, as you can see for yourself in this photo taken during a typical lecture (the ones with ties are faculty): http://www.feynmanlectures.info/FLP%20Classroom.JPG . For more information please see http://www.feynmanlectures.info/popular_misconceptions_about... . Michael A. Gottlieb, Editor, The Feynman Lectures on Physics New Millennium Edition

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