Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics By Its Most Brilliant Teacher

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Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics By Its Most Brilliant Teacher

4.18 of 5 stars 4.18 · rating details · 5,273 ratings · 209 reviews

Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher is a publishing first. This set couples a book containing the six easiest chapters from Richard P. Feynman’s landmark work, Lectures on Physics—specifically designed for the general, non-scientist reader—with the actual recordings of the late, great physicist delivering the lectures on which the...more

Paperback, 176 pages

Published April 6th 2005 by Basic Books (first published 1963)

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Mar 28, 2011 Courtney rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Science Nerds

Recommended to Courtney by: Required

Shelves: 2011, required, non-fiction

Note to reader: I am not within Feynman's target demographic...

So if anyone is familiar with Feynman's "claim to fame," it's basically the idea that he's the most brilliant Physicis teacher of the 20th century and his lectures are ingenius in both their presentation and method.

Now, I'm not the most science-inclined person out there. I've never taken even a preliminary physics course (and these lectures were intended for his intro Caltech class, so...). But I'm also not dumb as a rock, either.

W...more

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Matt Thanks for your review. I have an interest in physics and other areas of science, but like you, I'm not really educated in any of the subjects. I was...more
Jan 30, 2012 06:32am

Jeff Wells I haven't read the book yet (I'm reading it now), but I think it's important to keep in mind where these 6 "easy pieces" come from when reading.

This b...more
updated Feb 11, 2013 10:49am

Jun 22, 2011 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those interested in a straightforward introduction to quantum mechanical "weirdness"

Shelves: science-popular, physics, essays-lectures

If you have heard about the "weirdness" of quantum mechanics but don't know what the hype is all about, look no further than chapter six of this book. In chapter six, with his usual down-to-earth approach, Feynman describes one of the most famous experiments in physics (the double-slit experiment) and what it tells us about the way fundamental particles behave. He compares the behavior of "lumps" to the behavior of "waves" before moving on to the behavior of electrons... and the outcome might su...more

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Jun 06, 2007 Punk rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, science

Non-fiction. This book contains six chapters from Feynman's Lectures on Physics, which were transcribed from actual lectures he gave at Caltech during 1961-1964. It made me feel dumb. Well, not entirely, I did okay with the chemistry, biology, and astronomy aspects of it, as I have background in those areas, and I was all right with the quantum mechanics stuff because that requires more imagination than math, but I've never taken a physics course, so all the nonsense with pulleys totally shot ov...more

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Jul 28, 2007 steve ross rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, instructional

That subtitle may seem overwrought, but it's true. Hawking and Greene have done much to popularize (and fetishize) physics, but Feynman will help the layperson really start to understand it at its most conceptual, basic form. And if you haven't the ability to sustain fifteen years of advanced mathematics, these lessons can still illuminate the marvels of the "mechanism."

To be fair, Hawking (astrophysics) and Greene (quantum mechanics) both do a lot for their respective fields as well, but they a...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Ioannis Savvas rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: Φυσική

Ο Richard Feynman (1918-1988) είναι ένας από τους μεγαλύτερους θεωρητικούς φυσικούς του 20ου αιώνα. Καθηγητής στο Cornell, δούλεψε μαζί με το Hans Bethe στο Los Alamos. Το 1965 βραβεύθηκε με το βραβείο Nobel για τη δουλειά του στη θεωρία της κβαντομηχανικής.

Το Six Easy Pieces είναι μια συλλογή διαλλέξεων στους φοιτητές του. Ο Feynman διακρινόταν για την ικανότητά του να εξηγεί πολύπλοκα θέματα φυσικής με απλό τρόπο, χρησιμοποιώντας παραδείγματα από την καθημερινότητα. Το βιβλίο είναι απολαυστικό...more Ο Richard Feynman (1918-1988) είναι ένας από τους μεγαλύτερους θεωρητικούς φυσικούς του 20ου αιώνα. Καθηγητής στο Cornell, δούλεψε μαζί με το Hans Bethe στο Los Alamos. Το 1965 βραβεύθηκε με το βραβείο Nobel για τη δουλειά του στη θεωρία της κβαντομηχανικής.

Το Six Easy Pieces είναι μια συλλογή διαλλέξεων στους φοιτητές του. Ο Feynman διακρινόταν για την ικανότητά του να εξηγεί πολύπλοκα θέματα φυσικής με απλό τρόπο, χρησιμοποιώντας παραδείγματα από την καθημερινότητα. Το βιβλίο είναι απολαυστικό και διαβάζεται πολύ εύκολα.

Το δυνατότερο σημείο του βιβλίο από το δεύτερο κεφάλαιο (Basic Physics):

What do we mean by “understanding” something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes “the world” is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in nature, only much more so; but we may be able at least to find all the rules. Actually, we do not have all the rules now. (Every once in a while something like castling is going on that we still do not understand.) Aside from not knowing all of the rules, what we really can explain in terms of those rules is very limited, because almost all situations are so enormously complicated that we cannot follow the plays of the game using the rules, much less tell what is going to happen next. We must, therefore, limit ourselves to the more basic question of the rules of the game. If we know the rules, we consider that we “understand” the world.

How can we tell whether the rules which we “guess” at are really right if we cannot analyze the game very well? There are, roughly speaking, three ways. First, there may be situations where nature has arranged, or we arrange nature, to be simple and to have so few parts that we can predict exactly what will happen, and thus we can check how our rules work. (In one corner of the board there may be only a few chess pieces at work, and that we figure out exactly.)

A second good way to check rules is in terms of less specific rules derived from them. For example, the rule on the move of a bishop on a chessboard is that it moves only on the diagonal. One can deduce, no matter how many moves may be made, that a certain bishop will always be on a red square. So, without being able to follow the details, we can always check our idea about the bishop’s motion by finding out whether it is always on a red square. Of course it will be, for a long time, until all of a sudden we find that it is on a black square (what happened of course, is that in the meantime it was captured, another pawn crossed for queening, and it turned into a bishop on a black square). That is the way it is in physics. For a long time we will have a rule that works excellently in an overall way, even when we cannot follow the details, and then some time we may discover a new rule. From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are of course in the new places, the places where the rules do not work -not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules.

The third way to tell whether our ideas are right is relatively crude but probably the most powerful of them all. That is, by rough approximation. While we may not be able to tell why Alekhine moves this particular piece, perhaps we can roughly understand that he is gathering his pieces around the king to protect it, more or less, since that is the sensible thing to do in the circumstances. In the same way, we can often understand nature, more or less, without being able to see what every little piece is doing, in terms of our understanding of the game.(less)

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Jun 16, 2012 Tulpesh Patel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pop-science

There is not much more to be said about Richard Feynman’s impact on physics or science communication; the man is as bona-fide legend and as close to being a worshipable God as scientists can have. Six Easy Pieces is a collection of the ‘easiest’ six chapters from Richard Feynman’s most-celebrated text book The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

The ‘easy’ in the title, is, like our sense of time, all relative. The lectures, delivered in the early 60’s, were aimed at “the most intelligent in the class...more There is not much more to be said about Richard Feynman’s impact on physics or science communication; the man is as bona-fide legend and as close to being a worshipable God as scientists can have. Six Easy Pieces is a collection of the ‘easiest’ six chapters from Richard Feynman’s most-celebrated text book The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

The ‘easy’ in the title, is, like our sense of time, all relative. The lectures, delivered in the early 60’s, were aimed at “the most intelligent in the class [freshman and sophomore physics students at Caltech, one of the most prestigious institutions in the world] and to make sure, if possible, that even the most intelligent student was unable to encompass everything…”

We, as the general reader, are more like the ‘secondary’ audience for the lectures, who for Feyman at the time were the students “for whom the extra fireworks are merely disquieting and who cannot be expected to learn the material in the lecture at all”. Such was Feynman’s power of exposition, however, you can follow the science, each chapter getting progressively more complicated and abstract, without ever feeling like you’re being left behind.

The first three chapters, on Atoms in Motion, Basic Physics, and the Relation of Physics to Other Sciences, were so good I read them twice. Their broad remit means they touch on lots of different things, with one astonishing idea thrown in after the other. Mind-body dualism from a physicists perspective: “When an animal learns something, it can do something different than it could before, and its brain cells must have changed too, if it is made out of atoms. In what way is it different?”

The final three chapters, on the Conservation of Energy, the Theory of Gravitation and Quantum behaviour are a little heavier, but no less interesting. There’s the occasional formula, which immediately starts the eyes glazing over, but, to the lay reader, they serve to remind you just how much of the book is mathematics translated into wonderful, approachable prose. I’ve read about things like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle or the “double-slit” experiment, which showed that at the quantum level particles behave both waves and particles, many times before, but is actually the first time that I really *got it*. For that, I cannot recommend the book enough.

For those looking for more pop-physics in a similar vein, I can really recommend Why Does E=MC2 by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw, Quantum by Manjit Kumar and Black Holes, Worm Holes and Time Machines by Jim Al-Khalili. Having now read Six Easy Pieces, I can see the obvious influence of Feynman on the not just their content but their delivery and style.

There are also three prefaces to the edition of the book I read. Paul Davies’ introduction and David Goldstein’s special preface set the backdrop to the book and the lectures. The most interesting preface is the one written by Feynman himself for the original edition, in which he talks about how he set about piecing the course together, who it was aimed at and why, and how ultimately he felt that he had let his students down in some way. It shows just how much thought he put into the lectures and just how much he cared about educating his students. In some way, as someone enjoys teaching and talking about science, I learnt a lot from these few pages as I did from the rest of the book.

Its 50 years since The Feynman Lectures on Physics were published. Our understanding of the universe, and particularly quantum mechanics, has moved on in leaps and bounds but at no point did Six Easy Pieces feel like it was out of date because Feynman’s timeless ways of explaining complicated physics in uncomplicated ways. (less)

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Nov 28, 2011 Tom rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've had this book on the shelf for some time, meaning to read it to refresh my memory of physics classes taken long ago. It was a quick enjoyable read that explained things I've already learned in a new and refreshing way, (even though these lectures were given almost fifty years ago.) I was especially impressed with the first two chapters. With some minor modifications, these two lectures could be used to explain atomic theory to elementary students. This is quite an accomplishment considering...more

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May 11, 2011 Bob Nichols rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In these lectures, Feynman is very good at explaining some basic concepts for those fairly new to physics. For field theory, he uses the analogy of waves in a pool of water to show, in contrast to direct action, how motion in one place affects motion in another, distant place. We learn that matter goes straight unless acted upon by an external force, but we don't know why; that the earth is pulled toward the sun, as opposed to the earth moving around the sun; and that atoms are always in motion...more In these lectures, Feynman is very good at explaining some basic concepts for those fairly new to physics. For field theory, he uses the analogy of waves in a pool of water to show, in contrast to direct action, how motion in one place affects motion in another, distant place. We learn that matter goes straight unless acted upon by an external force, but we don't know why; that the earth is pulled toward the sun, as opposed to the earth moving around the sun; and that atoms are always in motion ("jigglings and wigglings of atoms") and that such movement increases with the application of heat.

Along the line of how a lay person might attempt to understand physics, Feynman stimulates some interesting issues and questions. He states that in joining together atoms "like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on." In this way he explains why atom combinations (attraction)take particular forms and resist being something other than such forms. This 'integrity' at the quantum level suggests a 'social' context where atoms interact with each other for particular 'reasons' and that an 'inner character' lies at the heart of quantum physics, as opposed to an arbitrary randomness. Under the principle of conservation of energy, the overall amount of energy remains constant; only re-arrangement of energy/atoms occurs. Rearrangement (and, by implication, the law of conservation) through atoms attracting and resisting each other suggests in one fundamental way how order and direction lie at the heart of the cosmos.

Feynman says we don't really know what energy is, but it does seem to involve a 'power' differential where matter and energy move to states of equilibrium. If this is so, then is this one way that gravity (differences in mass and distance) might have a parallel at the quantum level (weight of atoms as they combine or recombine)? Feynman writes that "all planets push and pull each other" If "pull" is attraction of bodies to each other, is "push" resistance so that there is also resistance (not just attraction) from a gravitational body when relative mass and distance are sufficient? If so, is this another way that gravitational interaction is kindred to the interactions at the quantum level where there is also attraction and repulsion? If likes repel, and differences attract, does this apply to gravitational size (and distance) as well as chemical charge? Feynman makes some suggestive comments when he states that "the force of electricity between two charged objects looks just like the law of gravitation...." (p. 109). Although Feynman appears to be focused on distance, not size, he does say, "in comparing gravitation and electricity" that "the most interesting thing is the 'relative strengths' of the forces." In describing the earth's movement around the sun, Feynman says that the earth impinges "on more particles which are coming from its forward side than from its hind side." Does this mean that the earth "bunches up space" ("particles") as it moves through its orbit and is this somehow related to the earth's own gravity?

Elsewhere, Feynman states that gravity is the mutual attraction of bodies to each other. Does this mean that gravity is not some (mystical) force at the center of the earth, but gravity pulling against itself (pulling mass inward) toward the center? In one of these lectures, Feynman says, clearly, of Einsten that light is mass and therefore it's subject to gravity. If light is both energy and a particle, what is the distinction between dark matter and dark energy in space?

While this is all fun stuff to think about, these Feynman lectures do not enlighten a lay person's understanding of the uncertainty principle, annhilation and antimatter, and absolute time. His last lecture on quantum behavior is not understandable.

Feynman is at his best discussing the role of doubt and uncertainty in science. When he differs with the theories of the past or of others, he seems respectful enough, saying that they are not wrong, but "a little wrong" or "incomplete." His footnote at the bottom of p. 59 directly challenges those who say wonder and awe are the province of poetry and religion, not science. He also blends life and non-life together when he says that "'Everything is made of atoms....there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.'" This is Feynman at his best, and a good challenge for those attempting to put philosophy on a solid materialistic foundation.
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Nov 02, 2010 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: abandoned

I may be one of the few scientists who is not a Feynman fan. He admits that his approach is to teach to the very brightest students, hoping that the others manage to catch something along the way. But, when you remember the man taught at CalTech--where basically every student is pretty darned smart, his approach seems a bit arrogant. He also claims that he had no opportunity during the lecture series to gain feedback from students--that this came only at the end of the course. Astonishing that s...more

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Feb 21, 2010 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone

I have read several other books by and about Richard Feynman: a man whose brilliance and oddness were well known within the Physics community, but sadly only his eccentricities were known by most of the wider world.

This book is not really about Feynman, rather it is six chapters excised out of a two-year course of physics lectures he gave at CalTech in the mid 60s. The publisher created this volume (and a second one that I am just getting into called "Six Not-So-Easy Pieces") and a companion aud...more

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Jan 09, 2010 Mary Overton added it

Lectures from a series given at Caltech in the early 60s - intended for freshmen, to stimulate their interest in physics.

Special Preface: "Through the distant veil of memory, many of the students and faculty attending the lectures have said that having two years of physics with Feynman was the experience of a lifetime. But that's not how it seemed at the time. Many of the students dreaded the class, and as the course wore on, attendance by the registered students started dropping alarmingly. Bu...more Lectures from a series given at Caltech in the early 60s - intended for freshmen, to stimulate their interest in physics.

Special Preface: "Through the distant veil of memory, many of the students and faculty attending the lectures have said that having two years of physics with Feynman was the experience of a lifetime. But that's not how it seemed at the time. Many of the students dreaded the class, and as the course wore on, attendance by the registered students started dropping alarmingly. But at the same time, more and more faculty and graduate students started attending. The room stayed full, and Feynman may never have known he was losing some of his intended audience." pp. xxii-xxiii

"'Quantum mechanics' is the description of the behavior of matter in all its details and, in particular, of the happenings on an atomic scale. Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen." pg. 116

"Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone, both to the novice and to the experienced physicist. Even the experts do not understand it the way they would like to, and it is perfectly reasonable that they should not, because all of direct, human experience and of human intuition applies to large objects. We know how large objects will act, but things on a small scale just do not act that way. So we have to learn about them in a sort of abstract or imaginative fashion and not by connection with our direct experience." pg. 117

"We would like to emphasize a very important difference between classical and quantum mechanics....We can only predict the odds!.... We do not know how to predict what would happen in a given circumstance, and we believe now that it is impossible, that the only thing that can be predicted is the probability of different events." pg. 135(less)

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Jan 15, 2013 Janani rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone interested in science,

Shelves: 100-in-2013, physics, books-that-made-me-think

Speaking as a Science student, I have to say some parts of Six Easy Pieces were quite boring. The first two chapters, Atoms in Motion and Basic Physics covered topics I've studied in high school, although it was interesting to read them without equations.

The third chapter, titled 'The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences', was quite intriguing, especially the links with biology. Feynman asks his students to consider what possible changes happen in an animals' brain when they learn some new info...more

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Jan 27, 2011 Upom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: physics, science, gravity, energy, atoms, lectures, nonfiction

Feynman, the debonair physicist of the last generation. Part physicist, part bongo player, part safe cracker, all man. A charming genius without the snooty air of formalism is a role model I can follow. And here in this book is the start to understanding a Feynman way of mind. These 6 essays are adapted from Feynman's Lectures on basic physics back in the 1960's. I wish I had discovered these essays before college, because they really would have made physics easy and interesting to learn before...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Lauren rated it 5 of 5 stars

Feynman never ceases to amaze me with his genuine ability to take a complicated subject (or concept) and make it accessible to the masses. After reading his book of short stories, I've been perpetually intrigues by Feynman, his interests, accomplishments, and thought process. These six lectures provide a window into the mind that helped inspire many future physicists and their subsequent breakthroughs. It inspired me to think more carefully about the mundane things we take for granted; I found m...more

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Apr 22, 2009 Connie Kuntz rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone who believes that science and spirituality aren't mutally exclusive

Recommended to Connie by: Christine O'Brien (soon to be Dr. C. O'Brien)

This book is truly mind-opening and I am convinced that Feynman was one enlightened dude. As I read the book, I felt myself opening up to the concept of atoms, amalgamations, energy, astronomy, gravity, light years, colliders and quantum physics. There was humor, history and simplified experiments in the book, too, which gave the field of Physics an "inviting" feeling, rather than a snooty one. The first five chapters were wonderful, but I struggled quite a bit with Chapter 6. To be clear: I sti...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Hayley rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is an introduction to the most basic ideas of physics, and part of its sophistication is that it hints at how deep the...rabbit hole...is, without requiring readers to have enough expertise to really go down it.

It was readable but challenging for me - someone with a bachelor's in biology and no great adeptitude for physics or math. My one complaint is that author Richard Feynmann could work a little harder to help lay readers understand how his verbal descriptions of physics translate...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Jarrod Call rated it 3 of 5 stars

Richard Feynman, like Carl Sagan, was an excellent scientist who also possessed the unique ability to communicate science's most exciting discoveries to the general public. Six Easy Pieces is a condensed version of the lectures Feynman delivered to undergraduates at California Institute of Technology (CalTech) between 1961 and 1963. In only 136 pages Feynman takes the reader on a journey through the atomic world discussing the intricacies of individual atoms within fluids and solids, then he pro...more Richard Feynman, like Carl Sagan, was an excellent scientist who also possessed the unique ability to communicate science's most exciting discoveries to the general public. Six Easy Pieces is a condensed version of the lectures Feynman delivered to undergraduates at California Institute of Technology (CalTech) between 1961 and 1963. In only 136 pages Feynman takes the reader on a journey through the atomic world discussing the intricacies of individual atoms within fluids and solids, then he proceeds to discuss concepts of particle interactions in the fields of biology, geology, chemistry, and astronomy. However, Feynman's toughest challenge is to describe the sub-atomic world including wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle. Feynman's true grasp of physics is shown by his ability to convey these concepts to the reader with words and images.

I completed a number of physics courses while an undergraduate and Wittenberg, so the concepts presented in this book were not new to me. My true interest in reading this book was to read these concepts from the mind of Feynman and try to understand his teaching philosophy. Regarding his teaching philosophy, Feynman says his approach is to first ask himself why he wants his students to learn a particular concept and then the "how to teach it" will manifest itself naturally. I find this introspective approach to teaching unique and this is perhaps why Feynman is such an easy read and great communicator of science.

Anyone generally interested in understanding how the atomic and sub-atomic world works would find pleasure in reading this book. But one doesn't need to be a physics enthusiast to enjoy the book, as Feynman himself knew that while physics helps explain how our world and the universe we are in works, one should not take these things too seriously as he write regarding a glass of wine, "The glass is a distillation of the earth's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be?...If our small minds, for some convenience, divide the glass of wine, this universe, into parts-physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on-remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!"(less)

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Aug 08, 2012 Megan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, non-fiction

A personable, clear, useful, and comforting read. I will probably need my own copy when I actually take physics. Fun footnotes, too; this isn't the most representative quote, but it's one of my favorites:

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-...more

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Mar 12, 2012 Miles rated it 3 of 5 stars

I only give this 3 stars because I didn't understand enough of it to give it more. I'm sure if I was a physics buff I would be in love with this book, but I simply don't know enough about these matters to comprehend even a relatively easy primer on the subject. Feynman is clearly brilliant and a talented, witty writer, but much of the text was still a mystery to me. Some parts were interesting and very accessible, but I really struggle to wrap my head around spacial thinking. Perhaps Dr. Brian C...more

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Feb 02, 2013 Molly Ison rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Possibly the most important part of this book is in the preface, when Feynman discusses the problems of physics pedagogy. These actually are easy pieces - if you have had high school level physics, the concepts should be immediately familiar. While Feynman presents them in a way that is fairly labeled brilliant, there are many physics teachers and professors who could give you an excellent understanding of the same material (and it's not too hard to find some online). The real issue here is the...more

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Oct 22, 2010 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science

Six Easy Pieces is a great place to start, not only for science students but also anyone else who skipped physics at school and wishes to get up to speed with what they missed. The explanations in this relatively modest-sized book are quite possibly the best I have read, and Feynman quickly demonstrates why he is so highly and widely regarded as one of the all time greats.

The six chapters are:

1) ATOMS IN MOTION
- an excellent overview of the structure and behaviour of atoms, this acts as a goo...more

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Oct 20, 2010 Nicholas rated it 5 of 5 stars

The best short introductory book to the ideas of modern physics in print. Why it's better than others: Feynman doesn't skirt around the mathematics as other popular physics writers do. He takes head-on the challenge of explaining complex math to people at an introductory level, and he does so in a way that makes perfect sense.

These six chapters are actually transcribed lectures from Feynman's stint teaching introductory physics to freshman students at CalTech. These are the six easiest to under...more

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Dec 16, 2011 Bank rated it 3 of 5 stars

I bought this book out of curiosity after reading a book by Herman Wouk in which he talked about his philosophical arguments with Feynman , an atheist , about the existence of God. Wouk actually went and took college level math again so he could decipher what Feynman was saying.
Well, perhaps I should have too , especially as I did so poorly in college the first time. In any event, I'm embarrassed to say I did not finish the book because the math was overwhelming so I did not learn the six easy l...more

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Apr 05, 2010 Aaron rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, non-fiction

I picked this up to re-ground myself in some basic physics. Specifically I wanted to understand the relationship between light, radio, radiated heat and so on.

Fortunately, the chapter explaining all that stuff is one of the better ones - it comes up as Feynman walks us through the history of physics. It's fascinating how the various concepts were unified over time.

The much-talked-about intuitive explanations are hit and miss. Some are great - the analogy of waves in water for the electromagnetic...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Dan Cohen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've been meaning to read this for many years and finally got round to it. In parts I found it failed to live up to expectations (it's such a hyped piece of work) but in others I found it inspirational. Feynman's ways of explaining things were sometimes extraordinary and it's more important that there are a few parts that gave me real insight then that there were other parts that seemed a bit pedestrian. I can only imagine what it must have been like to attend the original lectures. They start s...more

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Aug 25, 2012 Dmitry Kolomiets rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: popular-science

First half of the book was too boring for my taste. Too much philosophy, fiddling with different matters without deep explanation, too many remarks like "we'll describe this later". But the second half of the book was quite interesting and good written. Explanations of quantum experiments are clear and convincing (if quantum physics may be convincing at all). I really enjoyed the last chapters. Probably, I will find Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time more att...more

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May 17, 2013 Ignacio rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Feynman es uno de los mejores físicos de los últimos tiempos y bien conocido por sus habilidades como educador. Pero la física es difícil y aunque Feynman se esfuerza en hacernosla accesible, las piezas no son exáctamente fáciles. De hecho, en algunas partes logra aproximar mucho los conceptos a lo quepara un absoluto profano pueda ser accesible pero, de repente, acelera y se aleja , los conceptos dejan de ser sencillos y los ejemplos se convierten an muy difíciles de seguir.

En general es un bue...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Ali Pasha added it

While I already understood the concepts being discussed in the book, Feymen had unique explanations that brought additional insights into basic physics.

For example, he explained the size on an atom in an apple in a very unique way ... if you magnify the apple to be the size of the world, the atom in the apple is the size of the apple.

I highly recommend this as a great primer for physics.

There were occasions where I felt that Feynman skipped over key explanations, largely because he already under...more

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May 11, 2011 Temperamente rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: saggistica

La volta scorsa, con la recensione de Le due culture di Charles Snow, è stato affrontato un tema antico. Dalla tassonomia platonica dei saperi fino alla separazione tra Naturwissenschaft (scienze naturali) e Geisteswissenschaft (scienza umanistica), nella storia dell’Occidente si è sempre dato per acquisito che esistesse una differenza tra conoscere i fatti di natura in modo oggettivo e occuparsi di ciò che fanno gli uomini in modo più o meno creativo.

Continua a leggere: http://www.temperamente....more

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Oct 24, 2012 Andrij Zip rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, physics

As an introduction to physics, the six "easy" pieces contained within this slim volume are illuminating (particularly the sixth chapter, a mind-bending introduction to quantum mechanics) and accessible due to Feynman's ability to explain things well and make complicated concepts engaging. Unfortunately, Six Easy Pieces as a book on the whole feels incomplete and more like a trailer for the entire Feynman Lectures (a series of physics lectures that Richard Feynman delivered at Cal Tech in the 60'...more

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About Richard P. Feynman

Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as work in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman was a joint recipient of the Nobel Pr...more

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“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!” — 4 people liked it

“If instead of arranging the atoms in some definite pattern, again and again repeated, on and on, or even forming little lumps of complexity like the odor of violets, we make an arrangement which is always different from place to place, with different kinds of atoms arranged in many ways, continually changing, not repeating, how much more marvelously is it possible that this thing might behave? Is it possible that that "thing" walking back and forth in front of you, talking to you, is a great glob of these atoms in a very complex arrangement, such that the sheer complexity of it staggers the imagination as to what it can do? When we say we are a pile of atoms, we do not mean we are merely a pile of atoms, because a pile of atoms which is not repeated from one to the other might well have the possibilities which you see before you in the mirror.” — 3 people liked it

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