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Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you liked Volumes I and II of the Lectures...,
This review is from: Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals: Emended Edition (Paperback)
The Feynman Lectures deserve their status as classics, bringing novel insights and clarity even to topics that one would think ancient and musty (e.g. his exposition of radio waves). I'm not sure I would recommend them as undergraduate texts, since there may be too much wizardry where the solutions depend on deep insights or unexpected symmetries, with perhaps too few examples of brute calculation and no exercises to be worked by the student. However, they are unsurpassed when used to supplement the usual treatments or just to appreciate the beauty of the subject. For some reason, I never had the same feeling toward Volume III (Quantum Mechanics). In part, I think this is because he was trying too hard to reconcile the usual Schroedinger description with his own version of Quantum Mechanics, namely the least action/ path integral approach used in this text. Without the same constraint here (although he does very elegantly derive the wave equation from the least action principle), I experienced the same sense of wonder and awe that I felt from his earlier treatment of mechanics and electricity/magnetism. Although it's only my personal opinion, I would recommend this as the true successor to volumes I and II of the Lectures.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews) 71 of 77 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you liked volumes I and II of the Lectures...,
By Atul Sharma - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals: Emended Edition (Paperback)
The Feynman Lectures deserve their status as classics, bringing novel insights and clarity even to topics that one would think ancient and musty (e.g. his exposition of radio waves). I'm not sure I would recommend them as undergraduate texts, since there may be too much wizardry where the solutions depend on deep insights or unexpected symmetries, with perhaps too few examples of brute calculation and no exercises to be worked by the student. However, they are unsurpassed when used to supplement the usual treatments or just to appreciate the beauty of the subject. For some reason, I never had the same feeling toward Volume III (Quantum Mechanics). In part, I think this is because he was trying too hard to reconcile the usual Schroedinger description with his own version of Quantum Mechanics, namely the least action/ path integral approach used in this text. Without the same constraint here (although he does very elegantly derive the wave equation from the least action principle), I experienced the same sense of wonder and awe that I felt from his earlier treatment of mechanics and electricity/magnetism. Although it's only my personal opinion, I would recommend this as the true successor to volumes I and II of the Lectures.
52 of 56 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must have for anyone interested in Particle Physics or String Theory,
By electron0511 - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals: Emended Edition (Paperback)
It is a gospel for all physics students that this masterpiece is finally available as a Dover edition. Written by Feynman himself, this book explains the path integral approach to quantum mechanics in a way that is understandable to every beginning quantum mechanic. Path integrals are integral (sorry, bad English) to the study of quantum field theory and string theory, and you must be a master at it if you would like to work in either of these fields. Purchase this book at once and start working!
47 of 52 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Return of a classic,
By William R. Franklin "Illuminatus" - Published on Amazon.com
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This review is from: Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals: Emended Edition (Paperback)
It is wonderful to see this extraordinary work back in print, especially in this attractive low cost Dover edition. As an added bonus, the myriad misprints that plagued the original 1965 printing (and caused me such grief when I first read it in high school) have been corrected.The path integral approach, so clearly explained in this volume, derived from Feynman's graduate research at Princeton where he applied variational principles to quantum mechanics. This, in turn, was motivated by a seminal 1932 paper of Dirac. At the time, the formalism appeared to provide only an elegant means of deriving the wave equation without achieving any new results. But elegant mathematics always seems to have a way of finding application in physics. Just look at how formerly "obscure" topics like Lie algebras and differential geometry have become part of the essential language of particle physics. And path integral methods have proved useful in fields ranging from quantum electrodynamics to acoustic propagation. Like all of Feynman's works, this text combines sound, if unconventional, mathematics with remarkable physical insight. There is still no better introduction to the topics treated here. This book is required reading for anyone wishing to understand quantum mechanics (at least in so far as anyone can understand quantum mechanics) and who intends to pursue more advanced topics. Heartily recommended! |
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