I recently discovered that the caltech bookstore offers the Exercises for the Feynman Lectures, so I had a copy sent to me last week.
I tripped over a reference to Feynman teaching himself the derivation of the half derivative when he was in highschool. My search efforts turned up little (a subsequently relearned lesson - if you are looking for something that really matters, search USENET), so I geared up pen and paper to take a swing at it on my own.
So I beat on it over a couple days, then late last night had a breakthrough that gave me a solution.
This morning, I tried one last search, and found the easy way to derive this. So it goes....
[more ]Alibris search results for Frederick Shenstone Woods
I used that one damn tool again and again. -- Feynman.
Now that I have Advanced Calculus, by F. S. Woods, and also Higher Mathematics for engineers and Physicists by Sokolnikoff and Sokolnikoff, it's time to write the webpage that I could never find.
What is "differentiation under the integral sign", how does it work, and most importantly what sorts of problems bring it into play?
[more ]Thanks to the wonderful elves at Alibris, I now have my own copy of Advanced Calculus, by Frederick Shenstone Woods.
This, for those of you who don't recognize it, is the calculus text that Richard Feynman used in his self study.
This pretty much completes my Feynman library - the only bits that remain are the audio lectures (I've got the most interesting ones already), and perhaps the computation lectures.
Having finished grinding my way through another typo in Feynman Hibbs, it's time to celebrate by putting it all in one place.
Section 3-1 describes the process of computing the kernel of a free particle for a finite interval from the kernel of an infinitesmal.
[more ]I dreamed last night of speaking to Feynman, and he told me to save what I had just learned. Seeing that I had just finished working through a problem in Path Integrals, it seemed appropriate. On the other hand, it's one of the bunny problems from chapter 2 - I doubt Dick would have been impressed.
[more ]Basic Books is issuing the Feynman Lectures on Physics on CDs. One disc per lecture, grouped as the cassettes were into volumes. Two volumes bundled together list at 59.95 USD.
As best I can tell, only volumes 01/02 are currently available.
Update: Fixed the link. Volumes 3 and 4 scheduled for April 2004 release.
Snoopy Dance!
I've finally had a breakthrough working on Feynman's wobbling plate problem.
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