Folio Archives 358: Easy and Not-So Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman 2008

Easy and Not-So Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman 2008

This book is a collection of twelve lectures by Feynman given in the early 1960s but subsequently updated. He was one of the world’s most famous physicists, a renowned teacher, a Nobel prize winner and a first-rate eccentric.

The first six lectures should be understood by anyone with high school science, and cover the basics of physics and its relationship to other sciences from astronomy to psychology and geology to chemistry.

The final six lectures demand a better knowledge of mathematics and science generally, but I could work my way slowly through them, and along the way learnt some quite extraordinary things.

Examples of the amazing facts I learnt from this book include the following.

The actual size and space of an atom is not what I thought. If a hydrogen atom is expanded to the size of the average bedroom, the electron will orbit just inside the walls of the room, but the nucleus will be the size of a floating mote of dust in the centre of the room, but extraordinarily much more dense.

I knew as a doctor that medications that contained proteins needed to have a protein that spiralled to the left to be effective. Proteins that are artificially manufactured have equal amounts of left and right spiralling structures. But in nature, all proteins spiral to the left, and if you feed an animal (including us) only proteins that spiral to the right, it will starve to death as right hand spiral proteins cannot be assimilated. This left handed spiral was chosen arbitrarily billions of years ago when the most primitive form of life evolved, and has persisted ever since in every living organism.

The 254 page book is introduced by Roger Penrose, a preface by David L Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer, and has 12 relatively useless but decorative bound-in colour plates plus many very useful integrated diagrams, tables and pictures. It is bound in red buckram cloth blocked on the front cover and spine with a gilt and white design by Matt Broughton. It has gold endleaves and a gold slip case that measures 22.8x15cm.







































An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.

I have this sat on the shelf - still waiting for me to go back and read the 'not-so-easy pieces'!
Hopefully I'll tackle that 2nd part this year (and maybe do a re-read of the 1st part!).

Thanks for the post btw, always interesting to read.

I've had this volume glowering at me from the shelf for several years now, still unread as I felt intimidated with much of my A-level physics beyond the Oort Cloud of memory. Thank you Warwick for reporting that it's not that hard to follow after all :)

That stuff about left hand and right hand proteins is mind-boggling.

There's a nice video recording of a lecture given by Feynman at, I think, Cornell. He tells the audience that in the past people believed that the planets orbit the sun because of angels pushing them round in circles (technically, an ellipse). He then explains that orbits are caused by the force of gravitation that pulls the two objects together with just the right force to keep them orbiting. So, he says, the people were wrong: angels don't push the planets around in circles, the angels push the planets towards the sun! A very engaging and witty teacher, which is not common for a first-rate researcher. Yes, eccentric and at times acerbic, but he's left us with a treasure trove of new knowledge and pedagogical material.

One can also get the full set of lectures on which this book is based, either as a print set or as an audio recording of Feynman delivering the lectures. Anyone who has to teach anything could do much worse than studying Feynman's style.

>5 ubiquitousuk: "One can also get the full set of lectures on which this book is based . . ."

Folio Society Devotees might want to know that there have been numerous complaints about the print/paper/binding properties of the Millennium Edition of Feynman's lectures. You might want to avoid that particular edition.