Just to make you aware, I should not have posted that link to the Feynman lectures earlier - it was a lapse in judgment and the post has been removed. That work is still under copyright, and still begin actively edited and maintained. Further, some of the royalties on those and related volumes actually go toward maintaining undergraduate lab equipment, which is not an easy thing to get money for. I wasn't really thinking when I posted that, and I'm sorry to the people who work on maintaining the Feynman lectures.
So: as I mentioned in class a few times, go buy the lectures. They are well worth having, and probably among the most-opened books in my office at home. Failing that, you'll find copies in our undergrad library (SPS room) and at the Rogers library.
Keep in mind nothing published before 1923 is likely to be out of copyright. And, yes, you can actually find good physics books from before that date which are available online.
Dear Dr. LeClair,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this posting.
Before anyone goes out and spend $120 on the latest ("Definitive") edition of The Feynman Lectures on Physics (FLP), I would like to inform you and your students that my colleagues and I at Caltech have been working for several years on a new (LaTeX/Postrscript) manuscript for FLP, from which we plan to print a "Student Edition" paperback (hopefully) sometime later this year, that will be more reasonably priced, and that will feature improved typography, better-looking, more accurately-drawn figures, and ~800 corrections (for mostly minor, but annoying errors, in addition to the ~280 corrections we have already made in the Definitive Edition). Furthermore, the Student Edition will come with a new fourth volume that includes 3 lectures on problem-solving, which Feynman gave just before the first final exam of his course (currently published in Feynman's Tips on Physics), and approximately 1000 physics exercises, developed at Caltech by the Feynman Lectures authors - most of the more advances ones by Feynman himself - covering all the material in FLP, and supplied with answers, and example solutions.
Best regards,
Mike Gottlieb
Editor, The Feynman Lectures on Physics
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www.feynmanlectures.info
^ Get excited.
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