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Feynman's Lost Lecture: Motion of Planets Around the Sun | 
| Author: Richard P. Feynman
Creators: David L. Goodstein, Judith R. Goodstein
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £6.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 60509
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0099736217
Dewey Decimal Number: 500
EAN: 9780099736219
ASIN: 0099736217
Publication Date: May 1, 1997
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Richard Feynman, the rock star of theoretical physics, has left an image that belies the nerdy side revealed in Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun. Not many bongo-playing surfer beatniks would have spent hours of their spare time proving Newton's law of elliptical planetary motion using only plane geometry, but Feynman's Lost Lecture shows that the great man did just that. Originally delivered to an introductory physics class at Caltech in 1963, this book contains everything the maths-savvy listener needs to savour the pleasures of applied maths. Caltech physicist David L Goodstein and archivist Judith R Goodstein found the notes and tape amid another professor's papers and set to work making sense of them; unfortunately photographs of the blackboard drawings didn't survive. The book briefly covers their find and recovery work, then presents the proof as reconstructed--crucial reading if one is to follow the lecture. There's nothing easy about it, as Feynman acknowledges in the lecture: I am going to give what I will call and elementary demonstration. "Elementary" means that very little is required to know ahead of time in order to understand it, except to have an infinite amount of intelligence. He means, instead, that he is strictly using geometrical methods to reach his destination, which explains why it was so difficult to reconstruct without his diagrams. His charming Brooklyn accent and good humour show through in this lecture, even if the material is quite a bit drier than his fans might expect. Still, those interested in adding a new dimension to their understanding of this unquestionably brilliant scientist--and those with a deep interest in Newtonian physics--will find The Motion of Planets Around the Sun a rare and unexpected treat. --Rob Lightner
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| Customer Reviews:
A typical little gem from Feynman June 15, 2002
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
In his usual style, Feynman teaches us not only Newtonian and Keplerian orbital mechanics, but he does it in a new and amusing manner. Most importantly, in the broader view, he reinforces one of his greates tlessons of his teaching career - there's no single "right way" to prove, demonstrate or teach something. We all (nearly all ?) learn orbital mechanics through calculus. It's not a visual nor intuitive way of doing it, and it's a hard slog. Feynman's (actually it's probably Newton's) method does it through simple plane geometry that the ancient Greeks would understand.The authors are to be congratulated on dusting off these lecture notes and presenting them so well packaged. They're well presented, accessible, and given just the right amount of background context. Feynman fans will like this book anyway, but it's also a good taster for Feynman's style that any child studying GCSE applied maths or mechanics could understand.
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