Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics, Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

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I took three semesters of physics to complete my undergraduate degree; I'll never forget the dumbfounded look on my instructor's face when we were studying electrical force and I asked, "so, why *do* protons attract electrons, anyway?" The professor sputtered and said, "it's just a force of the universe. Shut up and stop asking stupid questions." Or when the instructor presented Newton's third law ("every action has an equal and opposite reaction"), and I asked, "So why is it that when I push against a wall it doesn't push back and fall apart?" The answer was, "Well, the wall doesn't fall apart does it? So that's that. Shut up and stop asking stupid questions." Dr. Feynman addresses *exactly* these types of questions, over and over again. (If the earth and the moon are attracted to each other, why don't they crash into each other? Why are snowflakes shaped the way they are? Why does blowing on soup cool it down?) I only wish this book had been 1300 pages rather than 130 - every page answered some nagging problem I've had with the physics explanation of the universe. I don't think you can learn physics from this book, but you can get excited enough about it to start digging around and discovering more, like I did.

As a college physics teacher, and like many other reviewers, I too found the content of this abridged version of Feynman's famous lectures not worth the price of the book, but as I listened to the tapes (and by the way, several are extremely poor quality), it occured to me that the brilliance that comes through is Feynman the Educator, not the Nobel Laureate, or physicist, or college professor......and from this standpoint this set is well worth both the cost and time to anyone who fancies themself as a teacher. I have degrees in education and get great reviews from my students on a regular basis, but that didn't stop me from learning a lot from Feynman about how to expand a student's perception, application, and analysis skills and for this addition to my own personal bag of skills, I thank him.

This book explains some basic concepts in physics so well that even someone who doesn't like physics might enjoy it! 'Six Easy Pieces' are 6 lectures from Feynman's complete 'Lectures on Physics', chosen for their accessibility to the general public. Feynman, like all great teachers, understands his subject so well that he is able to explain the concepts behind it in clear, simple terms. There are 6 chapters in the book, all of them generalized lectures on topics in physics. Feynman explains the structure of the atom and there is a very excellent description of charge and how atoms attract each other. I really enjoyed the chapter on the relationship of physics to the other sciences, especially chemistry and biology. There is even a section on the relationship of physics to psychology.Chapter 5 is on gravity and there is a great explanation of Kepler's laws of planetary motion and Newtons law of gravitation. These ideas are explained so understandably, I felt like I received a clear conceptual picture of what is happening.But the highlight of the book for me is Chapter 6 on quantum behavior. Feynman explains the wave-particle duality and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle so well that I really felt I understood the basic ideas. I am just a layman but I found I could really get what he was saying.Another thing I liked about the book is its honesty. If there is something physics does not understand, Feyman admits it, outlining the parameters of knowledge but acknowledging deficiencies. The author doesn't come across as a know-it-all, and doesn't 'talk down' to the reader, something which I find refreshing in a science book.Like any book by Richard Feynman, this one is a delight to read. Informative, honest and with that unique Feynman ability to make even the most complex ideas understandable to the intelligent layman.

If you have been reading the reviews of this book you might be beginning to suspect that this book is a great place to start. You're right. Feynman uses easy to understand examples and relates them very well to his subject matter. After I saw the 10 year anniversary edition to "A Breif History of Time" I felt guilty and I read my 10 year old copy. I should have read this book first. I would have been much better prepared to read the other. Both books were great but Feynman did a better job of relating the scientific to the mundane.

As a top graduate student in engineering and science, physics is a part of my life. A number of courses I took have taught me plenty of analytical tools and essentials of physics. Having thought that I know almost everything about physics, I looked at Feyman's 6-easy pieces and couldn't help reading it to find out if there is something I can learn from a small and elementary physics novel. Well, I am so surprised that Feynman taught me quite a bit about things that I've never thought about before, even if I am well familiar the complicated and challenging quantum electrodynamics that he developed. He had such simple explanations on conceptually deep natural phenomena such as motion of planets and stars, probabilistic interpretation in quantum physics ; and amusingly interesting insights on daily events such as why blowing your soup to make it cooler. That's what I thought of Feynman's 6-easy pieces as a person who knows physics better than most people. In fact, I bought and will read Feynman's lecture on physics (3-volume) after reading 6-easy pieces. I am sure that I will learn much more from Feynman and so will anyone.