From: ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de   
      
   I prefer to learn from books. But videos have two advantages: One   
     can watch/listen to them while doing household chores, and one also   
     learns the correct English pronunciation of the technical terms.   
     So I listened to some videos of QFT lectures by Prof. Susskind.   
      
     However, after about three videos so far, I am rather disappointed.   
     I have the impression that Susskind deliberately wants to   
     counteract all too flowery gobbledygook with a "don't talk, but   
     calculate" approach. I have always found such an approach absurd   
     in physics, but especially devastating in teaching. He does some   
     math, "We put this in here, and then we get this," "I'm not going   
     to say why, I'm just going to do it this way," and then he says,   
     "And this is the simplest example of a quantum field." (these are   
     all not literal quotations). He doesn't explain what a "quantum   
     field" is supposed to be. This doesn't seem very educational to me.   
      
     As an example of an approach that I like (at least according to the   
     few pages I have read so far), I would like to mention "Quantum Field   
     Theory" by Mark Srednicki (which is a written text, not a video).   
     He first explains that it is about combining quantum mechanics and   
     relativity. In order to do this, space and time must be treated   
     "on an equal footing at the outset". In quantum theory, time is a   
     label (parameter), location is an operator. So to treat them equally,   
     one can either treat location as a label, or one can treat time as   
     an operator, says Srednicki. Since the second is a bit complicated   
     (Srednicki says it would lead to string theory), Srednicki follows   
     the way to make the location a label. Each location x is associated   
     with an operator phi(x). And this is a quantum field.   
      
     So Srednicki first explains what requirements a quantum field   
     should satisfy and why, and then he shows how these requirements   
     can be satisfied, so that one can grasp the concepts. Susskind   
     lacks such an explanation (though I have not seen all the   
     videos in the series, so I may be missing something).   
      
   [[Mod. note -- It would be useful to have references to the specific   
   videos and books under discussion.  -- jt]]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)