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Title: QED by Richard Phillips Feynman ISBN: 0-691-02417-0 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 October, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.74 (58 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: QED is masterfully written by an American Genius
Comment: QED is your guide to the theory of Quantum Electro Dynamics which explains the interaction of light and matter. It is about a 1/4" thick and feels like it was written for the layperson to absorb without being over taxing. It isn't just another "popular science" type book because it provides an accurate explanation of the theory without being watered down by inaccurate metaphors and analogies meant to soften some difficult physics for the uninitiated. The text is a series of lectures Feynman prepared for an english teach friend of his who wanted to know about his theories but was afraid to ask (so to speak).
This book is fun to read and I highly recommend it for the scientist or (most importantly) the non-scientist on your gift list. Fear not, Feynman is the greatest teacher of science America has ever had to offer (imho). You will enjoy this and quite likely a few of his other books such as, "Surely, Your'e Joking Mr. Feynman".
Rating: 5
Summary: Easily understood intro to QED
Comment: Richard Feynman, along with Schwinger and Tomonaga, won Nobel prizes in the 1960's for their development of quantum electrodynamics (QED). In this book, Feynman attempts to bring this esoteric field down to the layman's level and succeeds as usual. The chapters in the book are taken from lectures he presented to a largely nonscientific audience, but the material is not dumbed down. Of course, many of the details are left out since only years of study can provide a true understanding of the theory, but Feynman presents his lectures in such a way that only a reasonable amount of thought is needed to appreciate the basics of QED.
"The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" is an entirely appropriate subtitle to a book that attempts to explain the theory behind phenomena that escape our everyday experience and intuition. QED is arguably the most successful scientific theory in existence. Its predictions have correlated extraordinarily well with experiment although "prediction" in the QED sense is not what we are generally used to. The quantum world is inherently probabilistic. There are certain things we just cannot "know." We cannot predict which photons will reflect of a glass surface, but with QED, we can at least accurately calculate the percentage of photons that do reflect. That's just one of the results of QED that Feynman attempts to explain, and he does so in a very straightforward fashion.
Feynman never insults the intelligence of his audience by pretending that the basics of QED are beyond its grasp, but instead repeatedly insists that no one really understands QED, but that should not prevent anyone from appreciating some of its results. With this attitude, Feynman explains the basics of partial reflection, particle interactions, and the discoveries of new particles, and he does all this through numerous figures and analogies rather than mathematical equations.
Richard Feynman was not your ordinary physicist. He was a physicist's physicist and a great teacher (read James Gleick's bio of Feynman called Genius). His teaching abilities are in full display in this book as he is able to bring an incredibly strange theory down to the average reader's level. I highly recommend this book. It will tax your thinking abilities but will never insult them.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent
Comment: I am an Electrical Engineer and had the usual education. It is a delight to read this book and learn about the fundamental theory upon which much of the Electrical Engineering profession is based.
Much of what we are taught in schools is an approximation and sometimes wrong. It is great to learn, even if it is only qualitatively, about more accurate representations.
I wish that Feynman were alive to keep updating his lectures with the latest developments. The lectures seem to have been last updated in 1980s and I am sure Physics has moved on since then.
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