The Feynman Lectures on Physics on CD: Volumes 1 & 2 [AUDIOBOOK]: Quantum Mechanics v. 1 [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

The lectures are enjoyable to listen to. The audio is of Feynman giving classroom lectures and he is using the board, but he is clear enough that the listener benefits from the audio only.
However, whoever produced the CDs should be flogged with a first year physics textbook. The material is not seperated into tracks; each cd is one 70 min track, so you can't jump to different parts. Also, every 5 minutes or so, some announcer breaks in to give you some unknown section number. The volume on the anouncer is about twice as loud as Feynman's, startling you out of the contemplative state you were in.

As other reviewers have stated this series has a few problems. The first is that the audio was copied from audio tapes as one long CD track without partitions which is a huge pain. The lectures are also all jumbled up into "topic areas", and the listener is left to align them to the chapters in the Feynman Lectures on Physics (the sections to which the commentator on the CD's refers are in these books. If you are learning physics for the first time, you definitely want the books to go along with at the same time.

Audio Volume 1: Quantum Mechanics
'Quantum Mechanics (The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Complete Audio Collection, Volume I)'
Volume I, Chapter 2: Basic Physics
Volume III, Chapter 1: Quantum Behavior
Volume III, Chapter 2: The Relation of Wave and Particle Viewpoints
Volume III, Chapter 3: Probability Amplitudes
Volume III, Chapter 5: Spin One
Volume III, Chapter 6: Spin One-Half

Audio Volume 2: Advanced Quantum Mechanics
'Advanced Quantum Mechanics (The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Complete Audio Collection, Volume 2)'
Volume I, Chapter 52: Symmetry in Physical Laws
Volume III, Chapter 4: Identical Particles
Volume III, Chapter 12: The Hyperfine Splitting in Hydrogen
Volume III, Chapter 17: Symmetry and Conservation Laws
Volume III, Chapter 19: The Hydrogen Atom and The Periodic Table
Volume III, Chapter 21: The Schrödinger Equation in a Classical Context: A Seminar on Superconductivity

contents from Autodidact Andy

I assume that most people buying this CD are like me, a math-oriented person who won't ever use quantum mechanics on his job, and isn't that interested in knowing every equation or law, but is interested in learning some of the basic ides and getting some intuition about the subject. Surely nobody who needs to *realy* learn quantum mechanics and use it on a daily basis will buy this. It's an audio CD, and you can't learn a subject like that by listening to a CD, you need to see diagrams and work problems. So my review will be from a person with that perspective.

To that end, certain of the CD's have really been very enjoyable. The collection is divided into two sets, "Basic Quantum mechanics" and "Advanced quantyum mechanics." By far, the first CD of each set is the best. I found them extremely interesting and enjoyable.

Here's an example of something very interesting: He discusses how laws of physics are symmetrical under certain changes, like if you translate or rotate. Or if you move at a constant linear velocity. In such cases the results of an experiment will be the same and there's no way to define an "absolute". This seems rather obvious, but it's interesting compared to places where the laws are NOT symmetrical: if you have a constant angular velocity, or you scale an experiment by a constant factor, the results are NOT the same. So the universe can detect absolute angular velocity, and it does have an absolute scale. Then he talks about whether or not the laws of physics are the same if you reflect things. For example, if you were trying to describe to an alien which way was "right" or "left" you come to the surprising realization that there is no simple way to do this without refering to some object that you both have seen, since the ideas of left and right are essentially arbitrary. (Same thing applies to differentiating between the north and south pole.) But, as it turns out, certain phenomena DO differentiate between "left" and "right" and so the universe is NOT symmetrical with respect to reflection. Unless you consider antimatter....

Several of the other CD's unfortunately focus a but on details which the average listener who just is interested in big picture ideas won't be interested in. Also, he writes on a chalk board and sometimes refers to the diagrams he's drawn. Most often he uses words to describe what he's saying, but there are definitely some sections where the person who can't see the chalkboard is at a major disadvantage.

One minor complaint: Although there's a voice over that divides the lecture into sections, announcing the section when a new one starts, there aren't any "tracks" on the CD. It's just one big track. To me, this seemed like a major oversight on the people making the CD's. It would have been easy to make each section a seperate track. So if you take the CD out, and then want to pick up where you left off, you have to ffwd to find your place. Lots of people will be listening in their cars on the way to work, and unless your commute is an hour, this will apply to you. Not a huge deal, but I thought it was an obvious mistake on the production team.

In summary, it's worth it just for the first CD of each set. The other CD's are pretty interesting also, but just be prepared for it to go into a bit more detail than you probably want, and to hear him referring to things he's written on a chalk board that you can't see.