Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the SunOn March 13, 1964, Feynman delivered a lecture to the Caltech freshman class, "The Motion of Planets Around the Sun"why the planets move elliptically instead of in perfect circles. For reasons unknown, most probably for his own amusement, he chose to make the argument using mathematics no more advanced than high-school plane geometry. Isaac Newton had pulled off much the same trick nearly 300 years earlier in his masterpiece, the Principia. Feynman, unable to follow Newton's obscure proof, invented his own original, geometrical proof in the Caltech lecture. The subject of Feynman's lecture was the watershed discovery that separated the ancient world discovery that separated the ancient world from the modern world - the culmination of the Scientific Revolution. Before Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, the universe was Earth-centered. After their discoveries, our idea of the universe steadily altered and expanded, moving outward to the infinity we try to understand in our own time. Thus Feynman deals here with a crowning achievement of the human mind, comparable to Beethoven's symphonies. Shakespeare's plays, or Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Feynman conclusively demonstrates the astonishing fact that has mystified and intrigued all deep thinkers since Newton's time: Nature obeys mathematics. For thirty years this brilliant and seminal lecture lay dormant in the Caltech archives. Now, in this book, Feynman's lost lecture has been reconstructed and explained in meticulous detail together with a history of ideas of the planets' motions. Anyone who remembers high-school geometry can enjoy it and can profit from the compact disc that accompanies this book. |
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altitude of SBC angle is equal area swept areas in equal Aristotelian Aristotelian mechanics astronomical atom bisector of F'G called Caltech change in velocity conic sections construction Copernican Copernicus curve deduced demonstration direction distance from F draw Earth electric elliptical orbits equal angles equal areas exactly Feyn Feynman's lecture Feynman's lost lecture force of gravity Galileo geometrical Goodstein intersection interval Isaac Newton James Clerk Maxwell Johannes Kepler Kepler's laws Kepler's second Kepler's third law later law of ellipses lecture notes Leighton mathematical means minutes of arc Newton's laws Newtonian nucleus orbit diagram origin parallel particle perpendicular bisector physicist physics planet moves planetary motion point G Principia problem proof proportional prove quantum mechanics radius reflected light regular polygon Richard Feynman segment semimajor axis square straight line string sweeps out equal tangent line thing Tycho Brahe universe velocity circle velocity diagram