Feynman's complete lecture series are now free.

[PB666]

http://www.sciencealert.com/all-of-richard-feynmans-physics-lectures-are-now-available-free-online

This seems to be a good alternative to PBS's pledge week, lol. Sorry, inside joke, but ........

[Vanamonde]

Bookmarked.

[PB666]

I wish I could post this quotation as a sticky, lol.

No, there are no internal wheels; nature, as we understand it today, behaves in such a way that it is fundamentally impossible to make a precise prediction of exactly what will happen in a given experiment. This is a horrible thing; in fact, philosophers have said before that one of the fundamental requisites of science is that whenever you set up the same conditions, the same thing must happen. This is simply not true, it is not a fundamental condition of science. The fact is that the same thing does not happen, that we can find only an average, statistically, as to what happens.-feynman lectures physics introduction.

If you work with reverse genetics and penetrance you are too aware of the laws of mass action as it applies to biologicals and behavior. I mean one thing he gets sort of wrong, that physics changes with scale, but is not true, there can be quirky people<-me, bacteria, stars or galaxies. There is uncertainty at all levels of observations, the difference at the quantum scale and larger scales is that the QS uncertainty has a core definition, where as uncertainty at the large scale may have an intrinsically complex and unresolvable maltiparametric basis. I suspect that even at the atomic scale there is a certain smoothness in space that becomes chaotic at Planck's scale, these becomes the quirks with a potential uniformity between these, and there might be scales below these where this uniformity becomes chaos that are only fathomable by handling uncertainties on the Plancks scale. Unfortunately we have no handles.

Edited October 11, 2015 by PB666

[Steel]

I mean one thing he gets sort of wrong, that physics changes with scale

I imagine what he actually meant by this is that on different scales there are different physical laws that dominate, I.e. on the scale of galaxies and clusters gravity dominates above all else, where as in a hydrogen atom gravity is pretty much nowhere to be seen

[PB666]

In that context he would be correct, quantum statistics as an entity applies to many scales. Things like quantum uncertainty apply on the quantum scale.

[cypher_00]

Ooh nice! Thanks for posting. I've only read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Which was a lot of fun. Such a cool person.

[wumpus]

Some notes:

The lectures are gratis not libre. You are stuck reading the webpage instead of a handy ebook.

The webpage is rather cumbersome with a nook (have to try it with a more advanced tablet).

It is still likely the best physics resource you will find anywhere (with the obvious exception of a paid paper/e-book copy of The Feynman Lectures).

[PB666]

Some notes:

The lectures are gratis not libre. You are stuck reading the webpage instead of a handy ebook.

The webpage is rather cumbersome with a nook (have to try it with a more advanced tablet).

It is still likely the best physics resource you will find anywhere (with the obvious exception of a paid paper/e-book copy of The Feynman Lectures).

well ipad not much better my cubital tunnel nerve keeps falling asleep.