Errata for The Feynman Lectures on Physics

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• errors in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vols I-III (not documented in our lists)

• errors in Feynman's Tips on Physics

• errors in our lists of errata

Contributed errata will be validated and used to update our lists periodically.

^†In his preface to The Definitive Edition of The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Professor Kip Thorne writes:

"The errata corrected in this edition come from three sources: about 80 per cent are from Michael Gottlieb; most of the rest are from a long list by an anonymous reader, submitted to Feynman in the early 1970s via the publisher; and the remainder are from scattered short lists provided to Feynman or us by various readers. 

The corrected errata are mainly of three types: (i) typographical errors in the prose; (ii) roughly 150 typographical and mathematical errors in equations, tables, and figures—sign errors, incorrect numbers (e.g., a 5 that should be a 4), and missing subscripts, summation signs, parentheses and terms in equations; (iii) roughly 50 incorrect cross references to chapters, tables, and figures.  These kinds of errors, though not terribly serious to a mature physicist, can be frustrating and confusing to students, the audience Feynman was trying to reach. 

It is remarkable that the errata included only two inadvertent errors in physics: Volume I, page 45-4 now says “When a rubber band is stretched its temperature rises,” not “falls” as claimed in previous editions; and Volume II, page 5-9 now says “…no static distribution of charges inside a closed grounded conductor  can produce any [electric] fields outside”  (the word grounded was omitted in previous editions).  This second error was pointed out to Feynman by a number of readers, including Beulah Elizabeth Cox, a student at The College of William and Mary, who had relied on Feynman’s erroneous passage in an exam.  To Ms. Cox, Feynman wrote in 1975,[1]  “Your instructor was right not to give you any points, for your answer was wrong, as he demonstrated using Gauss’s law.  You should, in science, believe logic and arguments, carefully drawn, and not authorities.  You also read the book correctly and understood it.  I made a mistake, so the book is wrong.  I probably was thinking of a grounded conducting sphere, or else of the fact that moving the charges around in different places inside does not affect things on the outside.  I am not sure how I did it, but I goofed.  And you goofed, too, for believing me.”

Feynman was uncomfortably aware of this error, and of others.  In correspondence with the publisher in 1975, he refers to “errors of physics in Volumes II and III that are more than just typographical.” I do not know the other errors.  Finding them is a challenge for future readers! To this end, Michael Gottlieb is creating a web site, www.feynmanlectures.info,  on which all errata corrected in this Edition will be listed, along with any new errata found by future readers."

Kip S. Thorne

The Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics

California Institute of Technology