Feynman Lectures

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Let me first thank Michael Gottlieb for his Comment on my earlier blog: "Tributes & Tributaries"

I just read the link provided and enjoyed reminiscing my youth. I also viewed the Picture of Feynman's Lecture Room, and my memories went back to that Golden Era of Black & White photos (more about Black & White later)

1966: IIT KGP; I was just 23 and was somehow persuaded to teach EM I, EM II, and EM III one after another. Just because our HoD (HNB)'s daughter Seema Bose was in my EM I Class and wanted me to be assigned her later EM Courses. That's what happens in a small Campus

EM I was fine: There was Halliday & Resnick. EM III was also ok: There was this formidable Panofsky & Phillips, with their Photos on its Inside Back Cover

I was stumped what to do with EM II and was getting depressed and praying to God. He sent me his Messiah in the form of Feynman and his Volume II. I DEVOURED it. At that time my memory was photographic. I didn't 'teach' from Feynman. I did one better: The Class was small, about 12 strong. I assigned one inimitable Chapter (like the one with the 'Oil-Can' Resonant Cavity) each to my students and asked them to take my place and give Lectures, while I sat in their chair (I renounced one of my 3 Lecture Classes a week). Everyone enjoyed the Course. When you ask the Cream of the Country to talk to their Class, they excel. Their Lectures turned out to be better; because they have not yet got to Panfsky & Phillips as I had to. This I continued for at least a decade

A decade later, I was asked to teach QM I, QM II, and QM III. By then I had read practically every book on QM. But forgot about Feynman Volume III. When I picked it up, I was just charmed. And I taught QM in the Reverse Chronological Order made famous by the one and only Feynman: Start from 2-state Systems, go to 3-state, six-state Bezene Molecule, discrete infinity crystal, and finally the continuous infinity free particle and the mixed Hydrogen Atom

One of my students, Sougato Bose, wrote to me another decade later that he could never quite get rid of Feynman's 2-state systems and was making thousands of Pounds Sterling of Project Money by many clever uses of it

A decade later, in 1995 or so, there was this Exhibition in the Nehru Museum of Science & Technology. One of the exhibits there was the converse of Newton's Wheel. Instead of the seven colors merging by its spinning and giving white, here there was a striped 'Black & White' wheel giving colors on fast rotation. There was great excitement and I was trapped into 'explaining' this queer phenomenon

My Messiah came to my rescue. I recalled there was an entire Chapter in Feynman Volume I (I think) on the Physiology of Vision. I told them to go home and re-read their old Feynman

My son visited the US last month and brought back what is labeled: "Croc Wrench". It is fantastic! It has a set of concentric spring-loaded hexagonal-packed elements. It can do ANYTHING on nuts and bolts that you want

Feynman Lectures are like the Croc Wrench. Name it, and it has its uses

At 67, I have now forgotten all Physics except Feynman Volumes

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Post Script: Around 1995, there was a Coffee Table Discussion among my colleagues at IIT KGP. There were those who used both Feynman Diagrams and Feynman Lectures on Physics. A vote was taken which of the two they thought would be used, say a century later. The consensus was: "Both", in equal measure.

I also cherished Feynman's QED, the compilation of five Popular Lectures. By 2000, Edwin F Taylor at MIT, who was my pen-friend for more than 2 decades, was using it for generating interesting Computer Programs for teaching Path Integrals. I recall assigning these as Lab "experiments" for simulating, of all things, Fresnel and Fraunhofer Diffraction for Double Slit, Triple Slit and Grating!

Talk of the Croc Wrench!