The Feynman Lectures on Physics now free | Hacker News Reader

The Feynman Lectures on Physics now free

feynmanlectures.caltech.edu

253 pointsstillmotion27 comments

> However, we want to be clear that this edition is only free to read online, and this posting does not transfer any right to download all or any portion of The Feynman Lectures on Physics for any purpose.

I'm not entirely sure how to read this in my web browser without it being downloaded in the process.

They mean keep a local copy. Likely that was written by someone who uses the word download for all computer related operations.

I didn't have any intention to make a local copy but I am going to now, just to spite their ludicrous prohibition.

It is a longer term cache.

It would be nice to get the audio released free as well. While not as useful as the books for actual learning (at least half of the audio is Feynman drawing furiously on a chalkboard and booming "and then this leads to this...") much of the beginning parts of each lecture are dedicated to well spoken overviews and ideas, and to hear them from Feynman himself is quite amazing. I've only been able to find some of the audio files for sale on Audible and on some rare bootleg torrents.

Let's use deep learning to remake Feynman voice!

Old but always immensely valuable .. Feynman is a huge scientific hero of mine

This has been free for quite a while already. I've been referencing this online edition since at least 2014.

This is huge! Highly recommend reading along to the audio if you can find it.

This is some years old, in case that's not clear, and "free" as in readable online at no charge. There was an interesting account of the production process somewhere, but I can't find a reference to it.

Is this a nice way to finally catch up on physics for someone who never got much of it in high school? Or would Khan Academy still be preferable?

Feel free to read them as they’re quite fun but you will realize you need a great deal of maths and basics so yeah Khan Academy for those.

No. Feynman Lectures was an experimental set of lecture notes (not a textbook!) for presentation to elite Caltech students (who already studied a lot of physics in high school) who would find an introduction to physics far too easy and boring, and Feynman himself was pessimistic about how effective the course was.

It's famous for being Feynman, not for being a great textbook.

Thank you! I completely missed this context.

It's great in many ways but mostly too hard for someone who dropped out in high school.

Can you suggest some good ones? From what I've seen in math texts, good books usually deal with one area (e.g. introductory real analysis) instead of covering multiple topics.

> It's famous for being Feynman, not for being a great textbook.

I beg to differ.

I know no general course in physics which is close enough to the Feynman lectures on physics. And I've learned about Feynman from lectures, not the other way. (Arguably, he is famous thanks to his explanations skills.) And anecdotally, virtually all people I know that participated in physics olympiad adore this textbook.

(At least - Volumes I and II; III is interesting as supplementary material, but I recommend other core materials for quantum mechanics, vide: https://p.migdal.pl/2016/08/15/quantum-mechanics-for-high-sc...).

https://theoreticalminimum.com/ might be a better bet, though assumes some familiarity with calculus.

Tangential https://youtube.com/watch?v=CQAcLW6qdQY

Note: Web access only, no downloads.

Curl can do recursive downloads downloading everything and following links...

And they can also be found on the High Seas...

Is this since 2013?

Tried to access on HTTPS, only to get https://scriptshadow.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/canary-i... on a page by itself. WTF?

when will the feynman lectures expire? I think they are great, but it would be nice if it had more references to sources.

Is it just me or all the images are broken?

Works for me (Firefox and Chrome). The footnote on the page says: "This HTML5-based edition features LaTeX equations rendered by MathJax JavaScript, and scalable vector graphic (SVG) figures. Your browser must support javascript and permit scripts from mathjax.org. LocalStorage must be enabled"

Thanks. Guess my privacy settings are a bit on the paranoid side ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com