Feynman's Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Relativity & Space-Time

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six NOT‑SO‑
easy pieces
RichaRd p. Feynman six NOT‑SO‑ easy pieces
Cover photograph courtesy of
California Institute of Technology
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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SCIENCE “In these lectures, everything you’ve ever heard about Feynman’s wit and
genius comes through.” —JOHN HORGAN, author of The End of Science
It was Feynman’s outrageous and scintillating method of teaching that earned him
legendary status among students and professors of physics. From 1961 to 1963,
Feynman delivered a series of lectures at the California Institute of Technology that
revolutionized the teaching of physics around the world. Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, taken
from these famous Lectures on Physics, represent some of the most stimulating material
from the series.
In the challenging Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, Feynman delves into one of the most
revolutionary discoveries in twentieth-century physics: Einstein’s theory of relativity. The
idea that the flow of time is not constant, that the mass of an object depends on its velocity,
and that the speed of light is a constant no matter what the motion of the observer, at first
seemed shocking to scientists and laymen alike. But as Feynman shows so clearly in these
lectures, these tricky ideas are not merely dry principles of physics, but things of beauty
and elegance.
No one—not even Einstein himself—explained these difficult, anti-intuitive concepts
more clearly, or with more verve and gusto, than Richard Feynman. Filled with wonderful
examples and clever illustrations, Six Not-So-Easy Pieces is the ideal introduction to the
fundamentals of physics by one of the most admired and accessible physicists of all time.
“Want to really understand why time slows, mass increases and length contracts as
something approaches light speed, why space has just got to be curved and
why it is not only impossible to predict the future, but actually there is
no fortune teller who can even tell us the present? . . . Sure this is hard
stuff—the cerebral equivalent of high-impact aerobics . . . but there is
no better explanation for the scientifically literate layman. . . . Just do it.”
—The WashingTon PosT Book World
The late RichaRd P. Feynman (1918–1988) was Richard Chace Tolman Professor of
Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He was awarded the 1965
Nobel Prize for his work on the development of quantum field theory. He was also one of
the most famous and beloved figures of the twentieth century, both in physics and in the
public arena.
www.BasicFeynman.com
ISBN 978-0-465-02526-8
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RichaRd p. Feynman
6
EinstEin’s RElativity,
symmEtRy, and spacE-timE

SIX NOT-SO-EASY PIECES
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Also by Richard P. Feynman
The Character of Physical Law
Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics:
The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures (with Steven Weinberg)
Feynman Lectures on Computation
(edited by Anthony J. G. Hey and Robin Allen)
Feynman Lectures on Gravitation (with Fernando B. Morinigo and
William G. Wagner; edited by Brian Hatfield)
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
(with Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands)
The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist
Photon-Hadron Interactions
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track:
The Letters of Richard P. Feynman
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out:
The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals (with A. R. Hibbs)
Six Easy Pieces:
Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
Statistical Mechanics: A Set of Lectures
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Adventures of a Curious Character (with Ralph Leighton)
The Theory of Fundamental Processes
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Further Adventures of a Curious Character
(with Ralph Leighton)
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SIX
NOT-SO-EASY
PIECES
Einstein’s Relativity,
Symmetry, and Space-Time
RICHARD P. FEYNMAN
with
Robert B. Leighton
and
Matthew Sands
Introduction by
Roger Penrose
New York
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Copyright © 1963, 1989, 1997, 2011 by the California
Institute of Technology
Introduction copyright © 1997 by Roger Penrose
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
All text and cover photographs are courtesy of the Archives, California
Institute of Technology, except for the photograph on page 92, which
is courtesy of the Archives, California Institute of Technology/York-
shire Television.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010941329
ISBN: 978-0-465-02526-8
E-book ISBN: 978-0-465-02528-2
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