I like Feynman's attempt at creating a personal narrative but honestly this book feels quite dated. Both in its content and in the maturity level. I wouldn't recommend this book for someone looking for help on physics but for someone looking for a work from Feynman.

Excellent !

Richard Feynman my beloved!!!

It was good. I'd have loved to have been in his classes.

This is a very short read, however Feynman presents us with some excellent tips for the freshman physicist and also gives us some insight into what learning under Feynman was like.

What I found most interesting was Feynman's differentiation technique that isn't often studied in school. It is a very powerful tool to handle awkward looking functions.

Plenty of practical examples are presented in the book and there is an entire chapter of exercises left for the reader to solve at the end.

What else can I say.

(I actually read the free online version.)

I really should've read this after FLP volume 1, but oh well. This may be of help in solving physics problems but mostly it just makes me wish I could've had Feynman as a professor!

I felt much better after reading this book - it gave me reassurance that I was not alone in feeling uneasy about Feynman's Lectures in Physics. At the outset, Feynman himself questions if the lectures that gave rise to 'Tips on Physics' will be of any use to listeners/readers. Until I heard that and subsequently read what his collaborators (in the Lectures on Physics project) had to say, I thought I had been alone in feeling that Lectures in Physics was interesting in many places, but not something that I could actually use to learn physics basics. It was heartening to find out that I was far from the only one with that opinion.

That said, I still love reading everything Feynman. For me, his 'lectures'' are more akin to watching a master painter using the most basic of tools to create the most beautiful artwork. It's a nice respite from traditional physics texts - short journeys highlighting very specific applications that illustrate how a master can wield simple laws/equations to obtain deeper results. Fun excursions - and then one can go back to learning physics from a more traditional book/approach.

Sprinkled throughout the book are useful tidbits ('tips'). One that comes to mind is Feynman's mention of the simple rule for differentiating the product of several functions. Most calculus books introduce the product rule for the derivative of a product of 2 functions and don't mention this useful (and simply proved) extension to products of n functions. Feynman illustrates the rule with an example but somehow fails to mention the rationale for the rule (if F = f1*f2*...fn, then derivative of log(F) = F'/F = f1'/f1+f2'/f2+...+fn'/fn), multiply both sides through by F to get F' = F*(f1'/f1+...+fn/fn), which is not only simple, but gives one a reason/way to remember the formula. Oh well, I guess that part is math, not physics.

In summary, 'Tips' made me feel a whole lot better about not being able to actually learn physics from Lectures on Physics. I still love Feynman-isms and the wonderful example he set for how 'real' physicists attack problems. Just wish I had been told a few decades ago that 'Lectures' was not necessarily the true path to physics that I was told it was at that time.

This is fantastic for undergrads! The undergrad lectures collected in the Feynman Lectures on Physics are enough to make any sane person question why the hell they're bothering with a physics major. The level of complexity is honestly grad level if you expect to read it with full comprehension. Luckily enough for the rest of us, this tidy little volume exists as a helpmate and confidence booster.

Collected within are four lectures that weren't part of the main sequence of lectures collected in the much celebrated introductory physics survey course from Caltech. The introduction to these lectures is more than enough to give the struggling student some confidence back again. Apparently, a bunch of the smartest kids in the country also had problems following Feynman and either performed poorly or felt so unconfident about their performance in the class that these problem-solving lectures and review sessions for laymen were crammed full of people. Every physics student can probably sympathize.

Here's what's great: Feynman and some of the other professors who ran the discussion sections put together a series of devious problems that are a lot more nuanced than they at first appear. Some have multiple solutions that show the versatility of the physical laws covered in your basic freshman survey series and to see them all worked out with step-by-step explanations from one of the greatest science teachers in the world makes lights turn on even for advanced students. The problem solving is far from dry, and the reader will take heart that Feynman himself humbly and self-deprecatingly admits to making several mistakes in these rather "trivial" problems. There is also an appendix loaded with supplemental problems for you to try. I think I'd recommend this single book over just about any other supplemental problem/solution guide out there for people who are either struggling with calculus-based physics or want to push themselves and test the depth of their understanding of the material. Give yourself the Caltech experience and see if you could have hanged with the best of the best.

Feynman's fans and so many of us scientists are grateful to have access to any paper or tape he produced. Why? He was bright, generous, and attentive, and he had that little vanity that we cherish because it is human and funny. We love the man the same way that you love the three musketeers when you are young. We love him because he had no respect for authority - in the sense that nobody could intimidate him or tell him what to do - because he always looked for the truth and most of all, because he remained curious all his life. This is the man who was only bored once in his life; he thought that dying was pretty boring.
If you never read any Feynman, do not start here, start with his great (serious stuff) The Feynman Lectures on Physics, boxed set: The New Millennium Edition or the stories he liked to tell (very funny stuff) Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think?
This little book introduces you to people who really liked him, so it is good. There are interesting comments from Feynman, for instance, he addresses the feelings of the students who have always been the brightest in their local high school and find out in college that there are brighter students still. For students: no-nonsense tips could save your bacon.

Well this little book disappointed me, I mean it won't help you much with problem solving in general and most of the material presented is very basic stuff. The exercises are very tough but there is plenty of hard exercises textbooks, nothing that can compared to Feynman's lectures.

Very interesting and a good companion to the lectures but wouldn't stand too well on its own.