I bought this book as a refresher on topics I learned years ago for a state exam on Physics. Unfortunately, I think videos would be much better than this book for learning physics or as 'refresher courses'.

My biggest problem with the book is that for me it just didn't work. The chapters are lessons Feynman taught as a professor but I think that's where the should have stayed at, being recorded as lectures. The explanations would probably work as a lecture, but in the book I felt like they were taking too long to get to the point. I get the point some of these explanations are trying to make, there is a lot of 'building up the logic behind the experiments.' For example, the final chapter Quantum Physics explains and builds the logic of the uncertainty principle through three double-slit experiments. First using bullets, then waves of water, and finally electrons. Personally, it just strained my attention because it took too long to get to the point. For the novelty of a Feynman lecture in paper format, I think his actual lectures (found on Youtube, for example) are just better.

My second problem with it is that there are quite a few diagrams, but the text just couldn't 'keep up.' This might just be an issue with my edition, but it was quite annoying to backtrack several pages to review the diagrams while the text explained them. In the fifth chapter Gravitation, the text could not keep up with the images, sometimes referring to images three pages ahead. It's not that it's hard to follow, it's just that it's tedious in my opinion. So unfortunately, the book just didn't work for me.

He's the Elvis of Physics, you know.

I'm immensely glad I didn't study physics, because this was not easy for me. But it was interesting and Feynmans style of writing (or rather, explaining) is even quite funny at times. Not was good as Hawkings 'Brief History of Time', but interesting nonetheless.

A personable, clear, useful, and comforting read. I will probably need my own copy when I actually take physics. Fun footnotes, too; this isn't the most representative quote, but it's one of my favorites:

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"

This book is awesome. These six essays are selections from Feynman's Caltech lectures during the sixties, which have become famous for their accessibility to the general reader. I love that books like this exist. Feynman writes about the basics of classical and quantum physics with an emphasis on the conceptual, rather than mathematical, core of the science. Very little math or formulas, but plenty of diagrams to illustrate his points throughout the lectures. Great stuff.

Definitely should have read Six Easy Pieces prior to reading Quantum by Manjit Kumar. The book consists of six lectures given by Richard Feynman to an introductory physics class. Feynman presents complicated material in an easy to understand manner. Could not help but wonder how scientific development of the past sixty years would have changed this book. Highly recommend!