Understanding of Feynmans Lost Lecture

Feynmans Lost Lecture

The book of Feynmans Lost Lecture explained the planet motion in algebraically. Richard Feynman (1918-1988), the prominent professor, was widely recognized as the most creative physicist of the post-World War II period. His career was extraordinarily expansive. From his contributions to the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos during World War II to his work in quantum electrodynamics, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965, Feynman was celebrated for his brilliant and irreverent approach to physics. It was Feynmans outrageous and scintillating method of teaching that earned him legendary status among students and professors of physics. Feynman helped to shape the world as we know it, and was a man of many dimensions Nobel laureate, iconoclastic icon, caring family man, amateur artist, and professional musician (in a Rio de Janeiro samba band). Feynman had a passion for physics that was merely the Nobel Prize-winning part of an immense love of life and everything it could offer. In the book of Feynmans Lost Lecture, David Goodstein, described how Richard Feynman used algebra to prove the elliptical planet motion in space. He explained the most important

properties of an ellipse and how to construct an ellipse. First, an ellipse has two tacks, called foci points, and when the light source is from one focal point, it would converge all reected light source from the inner ellipse to another focal point. In addition, the sum (F p + F p) of the distance from a point p on the ellipse to the two foci points(F and F) is equal to a constant, and this is shown in Figure 1. Last, there is only a unique tangent line for each of the points on the ellipse without pass through the ellipse. These properties are very important because we will use this properties later. To construct an ellipse, First, we can choose a string F G with length greater than FF as the radius xed on F for preparing a circle. Second, we will draw the bisector line of the FG and intercepting line FG at t and line F G at point p, The point p is the tangent point of the ellipse that we are looking for. Repeating these procedures as point G moving counter clockwise, we can nd the next tangent point of the ellipse, then conneccting all these tangent points, we have an
Instructed By: Dr. Jerry Shi Written By: Zhenfa Xu

Understanding of Feynmans Lost Lecture

ellipse. Later on Feynment use the same method to construct an ellipse. Figure 1 shows the way that I mentioned how to construct an ellipse.

To show the planet swept out equal area in the same amount of time, Feynman use different method rather than Newton. Newton divide orbital diagram into equal area of segment shown in Figure 2.

However, Feyment divide the orbital diagram into equal angle rather than what Newton did compared in Figure 3. In addition, all the external angle are equal to each other showing in Figure 3 (a). Besides this, ISJ, JSK and so on are equal to each other as well. Previously, we learned Keplers Third Law that Period is proportional to the distance of the planet (T a 2 ) and Newv tons Second Law F as well. On page 116, Feynman had found that v is the same throught t
Instructed By: Dr. Jerry Shi Written By: Zhenfa Xu
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Understanding of Feynmans Lost Lecture

out the entire obtial diagram and it alway point to the direction of the Sun. v means the centripital velocity that towards to the Sun. However, v is different from v; v is the tangential obital velocity, and its manitude is varies throughout the entire obital according to the varying distance between the Planet and the Sun. It is very important to distinguish these two different velocities. Comparing in Figure 4,

Feynman proved that the Area of the Planet travels about the same degree of angle but with R times distance difference, then the Planet swept out the area difference is R2 times as the closer one. Here is the prove. The area of same area of Sgh. Because GH gh, gzx equals to area of SGH is similar to zW h. As a result, Sgh. Indirectly, SGH, then SxW has the SxW similar to

SGH. If the base and height of

Sgh is R times bigger than

ASGH = ASxW

1 base height 2 1 = R base R height 2 1 = base height R2 2 = ASGH R2

Feynman used this result to conclude that when the Planet rotates around the Sun about the same angle degree at different distance, the farther distance takes about R2 as much time as the closer distance. This translates that t R2 . This proof matches Keplers Second Law
Instructed By: Dr. Jerry Shi Written By: Zhenfa Xu

Understanding of Feynmans Lost Lecture

T =

3 4 a. GMs

Feynman also sketched his obital and velocity diagrams in smooth curve. This time he draw the velocity tangent to the line that is connected to Sun and the instant point (J). After some time, the planet arrive at point p and make an angle . If he continue to complete the velocity diagram, it would equivalence to a circle that off center, showing in Figure 5 (b).

The graph on Figure 5 (b) shows that the off point origin of the velocity, and the center of the circle is at point c. It is important to know that the origin is an arbitary point inside the circle. In addtion, Feynman points out that as long as the arbitary point is in inside the cirle, it would make an ellipse. After looking at Figure 5 (b), this will look very familiar to the way that we construct the ellipse proviously if we rotate the graph 90 clockwise. Now, we will have a new graph showed in Figure 6.

Applying the techniques that we learned from earlier, we can nd the ellipse with foci at point c
Instructed By: Dr. Jerry Shi Written By: Zhenfa Xu

Understanding of Feynmans Lost Lecture

and the origin with tangent point at p showing on Figure 6 (b). In addition, the length of Origin (O) to p plus c to p is equal to the radius of the circle (CP). Therefore,

OP +CP = CP

This matches the property of the ellipse that he mentioned previously. People may know that this works only when the origin is inside the circle, but they would wonder what happen when the origin is outside of the circle. In this special case, the orbit will be a hyperbola, another conic shape. In our solar system, the orbital is nearly a circle. The distance of center point (c) and origin (O) is about 1 percent of the orbital diagram for the Earth. Mars is about 9 percent, but Mercury and Pluto is about 20 percent. Before knowing the Earths orbital around the Sun is elliptical, it is very hard understant why people said that the rotation motion of the Earth cause different seasons when people expect the Earths orbital is a perfect circlar motion. After we studied this lesson, we should clearly understant that the elliptical rotation of the Earth causes seasons change because the distance betweeen the Sun and the Earth is different during the rotation motion.

A This report is written with LTEX and AMSfonts The graphs are created by AutoCAD.

Instructed By: Dr. Jerry Shi

Written By: Zhenfa Xu