The problem was whether or not we could make a course which would save the more advanced and excited student by maintaining his enthusiasm. They were made to study inclined planes, electrostatics, and so forth, and after two years it was quite stultifying. By the end of two years of our previous course, many would be very dis- couraged because there were really very few grand, new, modern ideas presented to them.
They have heard a lot about how interesting and excit- ing physics isthe theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, and other modern ideas. The special problem we tried to get at with these lectures was to maintain the interest of the very enthusiastic and rather smart students coming out of the high schools and into Caltech. In addition, there was a laboratory session once a week. The whole group of 180 students gathered in a big lecture room twice a week to hear these lectures and then they broke up into small groups of 15 to 20 students in recitation sections under the guidance of a teaching assistant. The lectures form only part of the complete course. The lectures are, of course, not verbatimthey have been edited, sometimes extensively and sometimes less so. 1.Feynman's Preface These are the lectures in physics that I gave last year and the year before to the freshman and sophomore classes at Caltech.
0 kommentar(er)
