The seven famous 1964 "Feynman Lectures" at Cornell University are now available in a wonderful new form thanks to Bill Gates and Microsoft's Project Tuva.Click here (while using Internet Explorer) and a new video player called Silverlight -a Microsoft application similar to Adobe Flash- will automatically install. There are several steps but all you have to do is click OK or Continue when prompted.
Silverlight shows the video in a small box along with the text of the talk in caption form, as shown in the image. The screen includes other boxes where explanitory material and links to relevant information appear. The user may also add personal notes that are keyed to specific parts of the lecture. You can also click to make the image nearly full-screen.
Feynman is great! He conveys somewhat difficult physics and mathematics information in a clear way, with excellent humor. "Project Tuva" refers to an out-of-the-way Asian part of the old Soviet Union that Feynman tried to visit just before he passed away. I have watched three of the lectures so far and plan to watch the others this week. Please watch them and comment!
Each lecture begins with a short video of Cornell University circa 1964. You can see and hear the bell tower chiming their Alma Mater "Far Above Cayuga's Waters" - Cornell sits above Cayuga Lake, less than an hour from were lived in upstate NY. Our daughter Lisa went to Cornell Ag School in Ithaca and we visited often. It was and is a wonderful school and she went on to get her PhD at Cornell's NY City campus. Her unauthorized version of the Alma Mater went like this: "Far above Cayuga's waters / there's an awful smell. / Is it just Cayuga's waters / or is it Cornell?"
Ira Glickstein
