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by lupire 2602 days ago
No. Feynman Lectures was an experimental set of lecture notes (not a textbook!) for presentation to elite Caltech students (who already studied a lot of physics in high school) who would find an introduction to physics far too easy and boring, and Feynman himself was pessimistic about how effective the course was.

It's famous for being Feynman, not for being a great textbook.

4 comments

> It's famous for being Feynman, not for being a great textbook.

I beg to differ.

I know no general course in physics which is close enough to the Feynman lectures on physics. And I've learned about Feynman from lectures, not the other way. (Arguably, he is famous thanks to his explanations skills.) And anecdotally, virtually all people I know that participated in physics olympiad adore this textbook.

(At least - Volumes I and II; III is interesting as supplementary material, but I recommend other core materials for quantum mechanics, vide: https://p.migdal.pl/2016/08/15/quantum-mechanics-for-high-sc...).

It's great in many ways but mostly too hard for someone who dropped out in high school.
Can you suggest some good ones? From what I've seen in math texts, good books usually deal with one area (e.g. introductory real analysis) instead of covering multiple topics.
Thank you! I completely missed this context.