Feynman's Lost Lecture: Difference between revisions

{{Short description|Book by Richard Feynman}}

{{Infobox book

| italic title = <!--(see above)-->

| name = Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun

| image = HD.3A.053 (10481714045).jpg

| image_size = 300

| alt =

| caption = Feynman at the blackboard, holding the ''Special Lecture: The Motion Of Planets Around The Sun''

| author = [[Richard Feynman]]

| audio_read_by =

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| orig_lang_code = en

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| country = [[United States]]

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| subject = [[celestial mechanics]]

| genre = [[textbook]]

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| published = [[W. W. Norton & Company]]

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| pub_date = 1996

| english_pub_date =

| media_type = book

| pages = 191

| awards =

| isbn = 978-0393039184

| oclc = 33078849

| dewey = 521/.3

| congress = QB603.M6 G66 1996

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'''''Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun''''' is a book based on a lecture by [[Richard Feynman]]. Restoration of the lecture notes and conversion into book form was undertaken by [[Caltech]] physicist [[David L. Goodstein]] and archivist [[Judith R. Goodstein]].<ref>Reviews of ''Feynman's Lost Lecture'':

* {{citation |title=Nonfiction Book Review: Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun [With CD] |date=29 April 1996 |magazine=Publishers Weekly |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-393-03918-4 |access-date=4 March 2022 |archive-date=14 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414030649/https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-393-03918-4 |url-status=live }}

* {{cite journal |last=Stewart |first=Albert B. |date=Fall 1996 |issue=4 |journal=The Antioch Review |jstor=4613419 |page=490 |title=none |volume=54}}

* {{cite journal |last=Shapiro |first=Alan E. |bibcode=1996PhT....49T..81S |date=November 1996 |issue=11 |journal=Physics Today |pages=81–82 |title=none |volume=49 |doi=10.1063/1.881562}}

* {{cite journal |last=Thompson |first=William J. |date=March–April 1997 |issue=2 |journal=American Scientist |jstor=27856744 |pages=184–185 |title=none |volume=85}}

* {{cite journal |last=Weinstock |first=Robert |date=January 1999 |doi=10.1007/bf03025419 |issue=3 |journal=The Mathematical Intelligencer |pages=71–73 |title=none |volume=21}}</ref>

Feynman had given the lecture on the motion of bodies at Caltech on March 13, 1964, but the notes and pictures were lost for a number of years and consequently not included in ''[[The Feynman Lectures on Physics]]'' series. The lecture notes were later found, but without the photographs of his illustrative [[chalkboard]] drawings. One of the editors, David L. Goodstein, stated that at first without the photographs, it was very hard to figure out what diagrams he was referring to in the audiotapes, but a later finding of his own private lecture notes made it possible to understand completely the logical framework with which Feynman delivered the lecture.

==Overview==

[[File:Feynmans-ellipsenkonstruktion-g.gif|thumb|right|Feynman's construction]]

<blockquote>''You can explain to people who don't know much of the physics, the early history... how Newton discovered... Kepler's Laws, and equal areas, and that means it's toward the sun, and all this stuff. And then the key - they always ask then, "Well, how do you see that it's an ellipse if it's the inverse square?" Well, it's God damned hard, there's no question of that. But I tried to find the simplest one I could.''<ref>{{cite AV media |last=Bruno Bitencourt Luiz |title=Richard Feynman's Lost Lecture - Complete |date=2016-03-13 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcD-5UfY1g0 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211213/mcD-5UfY1g0 |archive-date=2021-12-13 |url-status=live|access-date=2017-09-18}}{{cbignore}}</ref></blockquote>

In a non-course lecture delivered to a freshman physics audience, Feynman undertakes to present an elementary, geometric demonstration of [[Isaac Newton|Newton]]'s discovery of the fact that [[Johannes Kepler|Kepler]]'s first observation, that the planets travel in elliptical orbits, is a necessary consequence of Kepler's other two observations.

The structure of Feynman's lecture:

* A historical introduction to the material

* An overview of some geometric properties of an ellipse

* Newton's demonstration that equal areas in equal times is equivalent to forces toward the sun

* Feynman's demonstration that equal changes in velocity occur in equal angles in the orbit

* Feynman's demonstration, using techniques of [[Ugo Fano]], that these velocity changes imply that the orbit is elliptical

* Discussion of [[Geiger–Marsden experiment|Rutherford's experiments]] with scattering of [[alpha particle]]s, and the discovery of the [[atomic nucleus]]

The audio recording of the lectures also includes twenty minutes of informal Q&A at the blackboard with students who had attended the lecture.

* [[Isaac Newton]]'s work: ''[[Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica]]''

==References==

{{Reflist}}

{{Richard Feynman}}

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[[Category:1996 non-fiction books]]

[[Category:Books of lectures]]

[[Category:American non-fiction books]]

[[Category:W. W. Norton & Company books]]

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