Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol. 1 Released in HTML Format 129
Dr. Richard Feynman's lectures on physics have been iconic standards of physics education for the past five decades. Videos of the series were put online at Microsoft Research a few years ago, but now the entirety of Volume 1 is available over simple HTML (mirror). In a letter to members of the Feynman Lectures Forum, editor Mike Gottlieb said, "It was an idea conceived many years ago, when through FL website correspondence I became aware of the many eager young minds who could benefit from reading FLP, who want to read it, but for economic or other reasons have no access to it, while at the same time I was becoming aware of the growing popularity of horrid scanned copies of old editions of FLP circulating on file-sharing and torrent websites. A free high-quality online edition was my proposed solution to both problems. All concerned agreed on the potential pedagogical benefits, but also had to be convinced that book sales would not be harmed. The conversion from LaTeX to HTML was expensive: we raised considerable funds, but ran out before finishing Volumes II and III, so we are only posting Volume I initially. (I am working on finishing Volumes II and III myself, as time permits, and will start posting chapters in the not-too-distant future, if all goes as planned.)"
What? (Score:1)
And nobody is making a copyright claim?
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
They have the agreement of the print publisher to produce this free online version. I'm actually somewhat surprised they got it; as the summary notes, they had to convince the publisher that having a free version available online wouldn't hurt print sales, which is often hard to convince publishers of.
The thank-you section of the page lists:
Re: (Score:2)
But isn't the copyright the property of Feynman's heirs? If not, why not? I am probably naive.
Re: (Score:1)
This page [caltech.edu] says Caltech holds the copyright. Presumably they require(d) that faculty transfer copyright of works they did in the course of their employment to the university. My guess is that's probably standard provision for faculty, though I'm not positive.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess it also helps that it isn't a book that's been
FLP Sales (Score:1)
I guess it also helps that it isn't a book that's been published recently - being an older title, sales are probably thin to begin with. An online copy can easily be a good marketing mechanism in that case.
Still is #55,812 rank in Amazon book sales and that is just for the 2011 3-book commemorative set! I'm sure that this clear and somewhat comprehensive physics treatise will sell well long after I'm gone!
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
I'll get to the copyright in a minute. But there is actually a huge bit of inaccuracy in the post. The videos at Microsoft research in *NOT* the Feynman lectures on physics. Those are actually a part of the Messenger Lectures recorded at Cornell in 1964 called "The Character of Physical Law" and preceded the Cal Tech undergraduate physics lectures which we now know as the Feynman Lectures on Physics.
Bill Gates has long been a fan of the lesser known Messenger Lectures. As part of the drive to popularize Silverlight, he actually acquired the rights to "The Character of Physical Law" in order to be able to present them to the public using the Silverlight platform at Project Tuva. Not a bad move for like minded Feynman fans like me.
Conversion? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they wanted to replace the "horrid scanned copies", and it was already in LaTeX, why not upload good PDFs?
What a waste of money.
Re:Conversion? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I had the same question.
My guess is that it's the "book sales would not be harmed" qualifier, with the assumption that just posting good PDFs would harm sales and an HTML version wouldn't.
I'm not sure how they got to that conclusion, but that's my guess anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
It may have something to do with stuff that can't be rendered properly in HTML. The web presentation is full of equations rendered like this:
I assume that is rendered as a proper equation in the hardcopy!
The good news is that the web presentation is searchable ASCII text, which a bit-mapped scan would not be.
Re:Conversion? (Score:5, Informative)
Browser issue? You should see the equations properly rendered by MathJax in the online version (maybe with a very brief delay before the sort of text you quote is replaced by an equation).
Re: (Score:2)
OK, I now found a cached version of the web page that actually works properly, and the equations are indeed rendered correctly.
So why can't you just print the pages out to PDF? Would the result be considered "not good quality" PDF?
Re: (Score:1)
So why can't you just print the pages out to PDF? Would the result be considered "not good quality" PDF?
Nah... a printed web page will only print even remotely close to the quality of a real typeset book if a lot of effort was expended on creating CSS specifically for printing, and even then you probably can't get even all that good. (Could you even get a table of contents with page numbers? I dunno.) And that basically means that it wouldn't happen.
Re:Conversion? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm guessing that the results wouldn't be very good.
One could cut-n-paste the text from the web page into a LaTeX skeleton document and process the file as you would any other LaTeX document. (After editing to put in proper LaTeX chapter/section/subsection/figure/includegraphics/etc. markup tags, that is.) It would be a fair amount of work but doable for the motivated but cash-strapped (and ethically challenged) student.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm not the publisher, so you'd have to ask them. My intuition is that a downloadable e-book (like e-pub format) would be a bigger cannibalization of the sale market than a good PDF that was formatted for normal-sized paper (or the larger-than-letter size that, IIRC, the Feynman lectures are printed on). I doubt they'd be willing to do a DRM-free version, as awesome as that would be.
Though it does bring up the idea that they might be missing a possibility of putting a Kindle edition (or another DRM'd versio
Re: (Score:3)
htlatex feynman1.tex
Re: (Score:3)
And how can it be expensive? latex2html seems to work just fine...
Re: (Score:2)
You would deprive a fellow latex user of his easy exploitation of the ignorant who refuse to learn computing, whilst they also convince the publisher high quality online versions will not hurt sales?
Personally, I hope they extract every last dime they can by running a terminal command and farting about the web for the other 8 hours of the day. However, I'm sure it has more to do with web formatting and hosting, links and other such things than getting paid to do nothing.
Protip: In capitalist societies
Re: (Score:3)
The person who did much of the conversion work has commented in the Hacker News [ycombinator.com] discussion of this, and explains why tools like latex2html were not good enough.
Re: (Score:2)
SEO most likely.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If they wanted to replace the "horrid scanned copies", and it was already in LaTeX, why not upload good PDFs?
What a waste of money.
or the LaTeX .DVI's
Re: (Score:2)
HTML works better in this case. PDF is better when you need the formatting to be the same on all the devices, but that is not the case here.
With HTML, the user can adjust the size and have the text reflow, and can separately scale all the math (see the MathJax context menu on any equation to access the math scaling settings).
For instance, the HTML edition is quite usable on even my iPhone, with my poor 50+ year old eyes. For a PDF to be usable on such a device, they would have had to format it in such a way
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Google Cache Version (Score:4, Informative)
Better, the Caltech mirror version [caltech.edu] is up, and is on a solid pipe/server, so will probably stay up.
LaTeX to HTML conversion (Score:3)
I assume this was expensive because TeX4ht wasn't up to the task. Was TeX4ht used as a starting point for the conversion tool? Is someone now maintaining an updated TeX4ht? Is the converter available in CTAN?
Surely you didn't spend all this money having people manually convert one structural markup language to another, instead of investing in tools to do it automatically, right?
Re:LaTeX to HTML conversion (Score:5, Interesting)
The TeX source for the equations is just embedded in the text of the page. The use Javascript to render them. I'm not sure why that was expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Editing is more than just conversion or reformatting - it's also ensuring that the conversion/reformatting operated correctly and did not induce any errors snd that the process produced reasonable and useful output in the target format. (I.E. leave it Slashdot to concentrate on the 1% of the task that can be automated.) Editing is one of those thankless tasks, because done right it's invisible.
Re: (Score:2)
Afaict the problem is a practical latex document is likely to use a mixture of structural constants, "just put this where I damn well tell you to" constructs and constructs that while nominally strutural are being tweaked to make things look good on the printed page (for example moving a figure up or down in the text so it ends up on the page you want it on).
An automated conversion is likely to produce something that is just about readable but a high quality conversion is likely to require human judgement.
Fantastic choice of markup (Score:5, Insightful)
MathML for equations and SVG for diagrams. This is a quality transcription from the book to online.
Re:Fantastic choice of markup (Score:4, Informative)
The equations aren't actually in MathML; they're in TeX. They're converted to a version renderable in your browser on the fly via MathJax (a big pile of Javascript). In some browsers that will result in presentation MathML output (but not semantic MathML).
slashdot effect (Score:2)
aaand it's down
Re: (Score:2)
Just like the good old days (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I remember one site replaced its home page with a static page that just said, "You assholes crashed my company's T-1". The good old days . . .
Surely you're Joking! (Score:5, Informative)
In addition to being a great physicist, Richard Feynman was also quite funny and a pretty big troublemaker in his day. What a great guy. If you get a chance, the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" is well worth the read.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
In some situations I find myself asking "What would Richard Feynman do?" I don't always follow what the answer would be, but it invariably lightens up the moment!
Re: (Score:3)
I wanted to say pretty much this, his autobiography is a great read. What a character. There's also a really worthwhile BBC-produced dramatization of his involvement in the Challenger [bbc.co.uk] investigation. William Hurt does a really good job portraying the great man, IMHO.
Re:Surely you're Joking! (Score:5, Interesting)
... And I would of course be pretty disappointed if any single one of you turned out not to have seen The Pleasure Of Finding Thing Out [youtube.com]... 50 minutes of gentle genius.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Surely you're Joking! (Score:5, Interesting)
Available in PDF:
http://www.chem.fsu.edu/chemlab/isc3523c/feyn_surely.pdf [fsu.edu]
But don't call him Sheldon... (Score:2)
FWIW, just like the movie airplane, Mr. Feyman spent a significant amount of time often joking...
But in case anyone is interested, the title of this book apparently comes from this exchange...
Mrs. E: "Would you like cream or lemon in your tea, Mr. Feynman?"
RF: "I'll have both, thank you,"
Mrs. E:"Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh. Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman."
Apparently, Sheldon's lack of awareness of social graces is a bit reminicent of Mr. Feynman's account of his own persona... ;^)
But don't call him Sheldon...
Re: (Score:1)
rs1n [slashdot.org] and I [slashdot.org] both speculate that the reason they don't just release PDFs from the Latex source is that the publisher feels that would compromise physical book sales (and HTML doesn't).
Publish the Latex source and you're back to "publisher won't allow it" land (if our assumption holds).
Pissed off because... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What are you talking about? The 3 Red Books were published in 1964. If you couldn't get them, blame your own ignorance.
Ran out of funds? (Score:3)
If anything screams kickstarter, this is it.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how much the rights holders would want to release the Feynman Lectures into the public domain, or a CC license that will ensure free access to this text.
After all, the Feynman Lectures cannot be that valuable to them. While it is widely recognised, it is definitely directed towards people specializing in physics and engineering. As far as I know it's rarely used as a course text either (age, lack of supporting curricular materials, etc.).
Qualia? (Score:1)
Many philosophers would disagree with that.
Re: (Score:1)
Errata? (Score:2)
.
Re: (Score:3)
You manage to ignore your own statement that physics is a process.
Newton's laws are not wrong. They're approximations. Now we have better approximations.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I just read the chapter on symmetry, and that is a bit out of date in that while it correctly explains that parity symmetry is broken, it still incorrectly claims that parity-charge symmetry holds, which we now know is false.
The lectures are very educational and engagingly written, so I recommend that you give it a go anyway. If you take it all on face value, you will end up with only a very few, minor misunderstandings.
CSS (Score:1)
It could do with a tad of CSS sprinkling.
Lectures on Physics videos not available (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I couldn't tell you where the link points as Microsoft appears to be playing toddler games with Google again. I'm getting a screen cap of the Silverlight with the message "Sorry, Silverlight for your browser is not officially supported." Of course I have Silverlight for Chrome installed. Click on the link provided and am told:
The version of Silverlight installed is: Silverlight 5 (5.1.20513.0) You are ready to use Microsoft Silverlight
Re: (Score:1)
LaTeX to HTML (Score:1)
A warning from a physics professor (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi. I teach undergraduate physics. If you're a clever high school or early college student interested in physics, you may have heard of Feynman, and you may have heard physics people give rave reviews of the Feynman lectures. And hey, he intended these lectures as a first-year college physics course, so that's perfect for you, right?
Wrong. This is not the right place to start learning physics. Feynman has some beautiful insights about how introductory physics concepts connect to "real" modern physics, and a way of cutting through the red tape to elegantly explain concepts in ways that make experienced physicists drool. But that's not what you need. You need the red tape. You need to learn to apply concepts to real situations, you need to get buried in the algebra, trig and calculus and dig your way back out again. Feynman won't help you about that.
Feynman's Lectures on Physics represent how an experienced modern physicist would teach introductory physics to a roomful of other professional physicists. Feynman was a genius, but his lectures are designed to impress, not to teach. You should absolutely read it, and you will love it, later in your career. But start with a more traditional textbook.
Re:A warning from a physics professor (Score:5, Interesting)
Bruce Sherwood, who taught a course using the Feynman Lectures as a textbook, has some interesting comments, saying that it went quite well for him.
http://matterandinteractions.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/the-feynman-lectures-as-textbook/
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Feynman himself admitted that that class did not go well, and those students were some of the brightest minds in the country (compliment intended).
Re: (Score:2)
Not censorship, just some advice from someone who does this professionally. Maybe you're different, go ahead and give the Feynman lectures a shot. But don't say I didn't tell you so.
Feynman would be horrified at the idea,
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Thank you! (Score:2)
That's all I have to say really, thank you :)
Adding footnotes / margin comments (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
This is conversion to HTML?
The other coefficients are only a little more difficult. To find them we can use a trick discovered by Fourier. Suppose we multiply both sides of Eq. (50.2) by some harmonic functionâ"say by $\cos7\omega t$. We have then \begin{alignat}{2} f(t)\cdot\cos7\omega t &= a_0\cdot\cos7\omega t\notag\\ &\quad + a_1\cos\hphantom{1}\omega t\cdot\cos7\omega t &&+ b_1\sin\hphantom{1}\omega t\cdot\cos7\omega t\notag\\ &\quad + a_2\cos2\omega t\cdot\cos7\omega t &
Videos (Score:2)
The MS research videos [microsoft.com] do not seem to load.
Re: (Score:2)
No.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Overrated? (Score:1)
Re:Overrated? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah, that's Einstein. He got lucky once and stole Olinto De Pretto's formula, but after that? Feynman was working all the time.
De Pretto figured out (or perhaps made a lucky guess) based on his understanding of the lumineferous aether. Einstein derived it from his special theory of relativity. Einstein presented E=mc^2 in a followup letter to his paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" (i.e. it's an interesting derivation, not an essential part of the theory). There was also the photoelectric effect and general relativity. Of the three, special relativity is arguably his least impressive work (Lorentz, et al, were also working towards it).
Re: (Score:2)
Of the three, special relativity is arguably his least impressive work
Exactly. I mean, his Nobel prize wasn't even for relativity -- it was largely for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, which basically spawned quantum physics. He already had earned his Nobel before he even published E=mc^2.
Calling Einstein a one-trick pony is using an awfully liberal definition of "once".
Re: (Score:1)
And frankly calling Einstein a one trick pony shows how fucking little you know of the man's scientific achievements.
That... was kind of my point. I was addressing AC's down-voted comment that "He got lucky once and stole Olinto De Pretto's formula, but after that?" which is so blatantly BS that I called it out in... perhaps too much of an understated manner. :-)
Re: (Score:1)
(It occurred to me just after I hit submit that, just as I assumed that you misinterpreted me, I may have misinterpreted you and you didn't mean to say that I was, in fact, calling him a one-trick pony. If true, I apologize, and hopefully we can stop talking past one another. :-))
Also AC's comment wasn't down-voted, I was thinking of his/her parent, the originator of this thread.
Re: (Score:2)
The thing that strikes me about special relativity is how he discarded the notions of space and time that had been fundamental for centuries. It may have been the least impressive from the point of view of mathematical development, but I'm very impressed by the willingness to change large parts of the foundations of physics.
Re:Overrated? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Overrated? (Score:5, Interesting)
Feynman was known for his contributions to physics, for communicating concepts clearly and in an interesting manner, as exhibiting certain traits known as "being human".
Now there are physicists who did far better in each of the three areas than he did, but very few (if any) did as well as he did in all three areas.
Re:Overrated? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Overrated? (Score:5, Interesting)
No. Not over-rated. He was capable of communicating ideas, deep and otherwise, clearly, which is very difficult. Consider how to convey the difference in magnitude between gravity and the electromagnetic force. The example he gives goes something like this:
RF: What is your charge right now?
Student: neutral.
RF: Why?
Student: Because we have the same amount of positive and negative charge.
RF: OK. What would happen if you took some electrons from your neighbour?
Student: I would become positive and he would be negative
RF: Yes. Now I want you to imagine you steal some of the electrons from your neighbor. Let's not be greedy. Let's say you take 10% of them. Now you are negative and your friend is positive and you will feel an attractive force towards him. The question is: how strong is the force of attraction. Is it larger or smaller than the weight of the Empire State Building?
Student: Hmmmm...dunno. I'm gonna guess larger.
RF: Yes it is larger. But how much larger. Is the force of attraction between you and your neighbor larger or smaller than the weight of Mount Everest?
Student: I'm gonna go with larger.
RF: Yes, you are correct. In fact, the force of attaction between you and your neighbor WILL BE ABOUT THE SAME AS THE WEIGHT OF THE ENTIRE EARTH!
The above paraphrased lesson emphasizes like nothing I've ever heard before how weak gravity is and how strong the electromagnetic force is. Simply brilliant.