Feynman Lectures On Gravitation (Frontiers in Physics) - Softcover

Feynman, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813340381 ISBN 13: 9780813340388

Publisher: Westview Press, 2002

Synopsis

The Feynman Lectures on Gravitation are based on notes prepared during a course on gravitational physics that Richard Feynman taught at Caltech during the 1962-63 academic year. For several years prior to these lectures, Feynman thought long and hard about the fundamental problems in gravitational physics, yet he published very little. These lectures represent a useful record of his viewpoints and some of his insights into gravity and its application to cosmology, superstars, wormholes, and gravitational waves at that particular time. The lectures also contain a number of fascinating digressions and asides on the foundations of physics and other issues.Characteristically, Feynman took an untraditional non-geometric approach to gravitation and general relativity based on the underlying quantum aspects of gravity. Hence, these lectures contain a unique pedagogical account of the development of Einstein's general theory of relativity as the inevitable result of the demand for a self-consistent theory of a massless spin-2 field (the graviton) coupled to the energy-momentum tensor of matter. This approach also demonstrates the intimate and fundamental connection between gauge invariance and the principle of equivalence.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Feynman

About this edition

• Publisher: Westview Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0813340381
• ISBN 13: 9780813340388
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 282