PBS Television--Part I of III 'Elegant Universe'

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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Found it, an excerpt from his

Found it, an excerpt from his fabulous 'Lectures On Physics', Volume I Chapter 2 'Basic Physics' Sec 2.1.

Quote:

The things with which we concern ourselves in science appear in myriad forms, and with a multitude of attributes. For example, if we stand on the shore and look at the sea, we see the water, the waves breaking, the foam, the sloshing motion of the water, the sound, the air, the winds and the clouds, the sun and the blue sky, and light; there is sand and there are rocks of various hardness and permanence, color and texture. There are animals and seaweed, hunger and disease, and the observer on the beach; there may be even happiness and thought. Any other spot in nature has a similar variety of things and influences. It is always as complicated as that, no matter where it is. Curiosity demands that we ask questions, that we try to put things together and try to understand this multitude of aspects as perhaps resulting from the action of a relatively small number of elemental things and forces acting in an infinite variety of combinations.
For example: Is the sand other than the rocks? That is, is the sand perhaps nothing but a great number of very tiny stones? Is the moon a great rock? If we understood rocks, would we also understand the sand and the moon? Is the wind and sloshing of the air analogous to the sloshing motion of the water in the sea? What common features do different movements have? What is common to different kinds of sound? How many different colors are there? And so on. In this way we try gradually to analyze all things, to put together things which at first sight look different, with the hope that we may be able to reduce the number of different things and thereby understand them better.


A brilliant mind...
Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Dave Burbank
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Hey Mike, great quote. I

Hey Mike, great quote. I have always been a fan of Feynman (take a look ant my sig), not only was he a great theoretical physicist but he was one of the best teachers out there. I feel honored to be able to listen to his lectures (on audio tape... well no, torrented) he gave back at Caltech. What a mind indeed!

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. - Richard Feynman

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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RE: Hey Mike, great quote.

Message 30852 in response to message 30851

Quote:
Hey Mike, great quote. I have always been a fan of Feynman (take a look ant my sig), not only was he a great theoretical physicist but he was one of the best teachers out there. I feel honored to be able to listen to his lectures (on audio tape... well no, torrented) he gave back at Caltech. What a mind indeed!


Yeah those lectures are a blast! It does help in the 'thicker' sections to have read the hardcopy ( I did, cover to cover, in the late 70's ) - but the sounds of coughing, moving chairs, chuckles etc give a terrific flavour .... it's a real treasure. It would have been better to have actually been there, but I was only three years old at the time. :-)
Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Dave Burbank
Dave Burbank
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RE: Yeah those lectures

Message 30853 in response to message 30852

Quote:


Yeah those lectures are a blast! It does help in the 'thicker' sections to have read the hardcopy ( I did, cover to cover, in the late 70's ) - but the sounds of coughing, moving chairs, chuckles etc give a terrific flavour .... it's a real treasure. It would have been better to have actually been there, but I was only three years old at the time. :-)
Cheers, Mike.

I've only been able to find the second volume to his lectures in hardcopy, and to be honest, it's a little too 'thick' for me … doesn't keep me from trying though.
Yeah, would have been great to be there, but I was only a glint in my parents eyes then!
Dave

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. - Richard Feynman

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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RE: I've only been able to

Message 30854 in response to message 30853

Quote:
I've only been able to find the second volume to his lectures in hardcopy, and to be honest, it's a little too 'thick' for me … doesn't keep me from trying though. Yeah, would have been great to be there, but I was only a glint in my parents eyes then!


Well, I may have read them but don't assume I swallowed them whole! :-)
Volume III is the hardest. It deals with the deep bowels of quantum mechanics which is the most removed from everyday experience and intuition.
I still do have 'yet another run' at certain topics. Some highlights are worth another read through out of simple pleasure-
- 'exposes' of maths of algebra, probability, calculus, tensors and complex numbers. These beat any mathematics text I've seen for clarity.
- humourous analysis of energy as a 'virtual' quantity.
- the 'bullet-time' analogy of quantum behaviour in the double slit experiment.
- symmetry of laws ( beware left handed aliens ).
- principle of least time in optics.
You might want to look here for a terrific set of video lectures given in New Zealand before his health started to fail. You'll see, alas, what we're missing from the pure audio records.
I am an unashamed fan :-)
Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Chipper Q
Chipper Q
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That's some gear I didn't

That's some gear I didn't have; thanks for lecture link, Mike! Haven't had time to watch them all, yet. Interesting that numbers like 3.14159265... and 2.7182818... come to us by 'trickery', while the number '1/137...' comes as one of the greatest mysteries; no argument there! Nature: doesn't she know all the tricks? :)

Ernesto Solis
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Gentlemen, Thank you so

Gentlemen,
Thank you so much for this information. It is so cool...
Are their anymore lectures like this?
Ernie S
Team Art bell
God Bless

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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RE: Are their anymore

Message 30857 in response to message 30856

Quote:
Are their anymore lectures like this?


Sure, there's a whole raft out there. Try these for starters:
Slac Summer Institute, branch from here to lots of current and past subjects for about a decade gone.
Caltech's Lectures, a lot of well known luminaries in astronomy and space science.
Fermilab's Lectures, search here for mostly particle physics of course but some interesting astronomical stuff ( click the 'Series' drop down to search specific topics ). It's graded according to difficulty too.
Centre For Gravitational Wave Physics, branch from this page to others some of which have video links but it's not neatly sorted.
Brookhaven National Laboratory, mainly stuff about synchrotron radiation and heavy ion colliders, but also more general topics.
CERN, birthplace of the WWW and lots of Nobel Laureates, not all in English!
So, knock yourself out!! :-)
Remember - Google is your friend!
Oh, and each time you find one - bookmark it!
Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) If you really like 'boys toys' and large engineering projects then check this out - I want the concrete franchise ..... :-)

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Es99
Es99
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RE: Yeah those lectures are

Message 30858 in response to message 30852

Quote:

Yeah those lectures are a blast! It does help in the 'thicker' sections to have read the hardcopy ( I did, cover to cover, in the late 70's ) - but the sounds of coughing, moving chairs, chuckles etc give a terrific flavour .... it's a real treasure. It would have been better to have actually been there, but I was only three years old at the time. :-)
Cheers, Mike.


*Sigh* My ex got custody of all the Feynman lectures when we broke up. :-(

Physics is for gurls!

R/B
R/B
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RE: Hey Mike, great quote.

Message 30859 in response to message 30851

Quote:
Hey Mike, great quote. I have always been a fan of Feynman (take a look ant my sig), not only was he a great theoretical physicist but he was one of the best teachers out there. I feel honored to be able to listen to his lectures (on audio tape... well no, torrented) he gave back at Caltech. What a mind indeed!


Burbank, I've gotten my hands on a copy of 'The meaning of it all'...by Feynman. Am about to start reading it. Have read 'Six Easy Pieces' and loved that...the anectodes themselves are worth it, especially the one about him and the Abacus. edit=I was at a Philosophers' round table where this came up conceptually and used it as an example to delineate concreteness in comparison to abstract, homogenously explained concepts...

ps (to anyone in general) Regarding this series on TV. What is the 'hoakem' factor in regard to the idea that the Universe 'came into being' by shifting String 'platforms' (my words) that incidentally collided interdimensionally and spawned our matter and existence? Especially now that the newer science that I've been reading suggests that the supposed singularity of the Universe doesn't exist at the point of the Big Bang....

Founder of BOINC group, Objectivists, a group of philosophically minded rational data crunchers.

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