Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
This book reprints the six easiest chapters from Feynman's celebrated Lectures on Physics (LJ 12/15/63), which the Nobel Prize-winning scientist delivered from 1961 to 1963 at the California Institute of Technology. Intended for as wide an audience as possible, these chapters are primarily qualitative in nature, with a minimum of formal mathematics. They discuss atoms, basic physics, the relation of physics to other sciences, the conservation of energy, gravitation, and quantum behavior. While this informative work provides a relevant historical perspective on the essentials of physics, the result is somewhat superficial. Nonetheless, because Lectures on Physics is out of print and because the information is still relevant, reprinting these specific chapters was probably a realistic move. The material will be readily understood by scholars, physics students, and informed lay readers. Recommended for academic and public libraries. (Audio tape and CD packages are also available.)-Donald G. Frank, Harvard Univ. Lib., Cambridge, Mass.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.