Feynman: The Lectures and the Man

Having taken the Feynman physics course at Caltech in 1965–67 as taught by Tom Lauritsen, John Bahcall, and others, I greatly enjoyed Matthew Sands’s story behind the books (“Capturing the Wisdom of Feynman,” Physics Today, April 2005, page 49 ,).

I recall the Feynman lectures as a very good introduction to physics, and many of the concepts have stayed with me a long time. Unfortunately, there was a serious disconnect with the problem sets, supposedly compiled by Foster Strong, which were repackaged as if they had been written for the lectures. It was too easy to emerge from the lecture, even after having read the text, with no idea how to solve many of the problems. Incoming freshmen differed widely in math preparation, and the problem sets required techniques not yet taught in freshman calculus. The disconnect was profound. The lectures excelled at explaining ideas, but too many of the problems were “plug-and-grind” exercises or were so deliberately challenging that they utterly frustrated many students.

There are good reasons the lectures are still being reprinted and read. But I wish more effort had been devoted to creating problems that worked better with them.