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"What he did do was just what Feynman always did. He absolutely riveted the attention of everyone in the room for the entire time he was there. His need to do that helps explain some of the racy stories he liked to tell about himself, but it also lies close to the core of what made him a great teacher. For Feynman, the lecture hall was a theater, and the lecturer a performer, responsible for providing drama and fireworks as well as facts and figures. This was true regardless of his audience, whether he was talking to undergraduates or graduate students, to his colleagues or the general public.
"I can remember many moments of high drama in Feynman lectures. Once, for example, several years ago, he taught a course in advanced quantum mechanics in a large lecture hall, to a class consisting of a few registered graduate students and most of the CalTech physics faculty. At one point he started explaining how to represent certain complicated integrals diagrammatically: time on this axis, space on that axis, wiggly line for this, straight line for that and...turning around suddenly to face the class with a wicked grin, he said, 'and this is called the diagram!" The class ignited with spontaneous applause."
--David L. Goodstein, from "More of the Good Stuff"
Click here to visit a video archive of Feynman's lectures at University of Aukland, NZ
"I can remember many moments of high drama in Feynman lectures. Once, for example, several years ago, he taught a course in advanced quantum mechanics in a large lecture hall, to a class consisting of a few registered graduate students and most of the CalTech physics faculty. At one point he started explaining how to represent certain complicated integrals diagrammatically: time on this axis, space on that axis, wiggly line for this, straight line for that and...turning around suddenly to face the class with a wicked grin, he said, 'and this is called the diagram!" The class ignited with spontaneous applause."
--David L. Goodstein, from "More of the Good Stuff"
Click here to visit a video archive of Feynman's lectures at University of Aukland, NZ