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Author: Daniel F. Styer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2000-02-24
Total Pages: 172
ISBN-13: 9780521667807
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An exceptionally accessible, accurate and non-technical introduction to the core concepts of quantum mechanics.
Author: Carlo Rovelli
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2022-05-24
Total Pages: 257
ISBN-13: 0593328892
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Named a Best Book of 2021 by the Financial Times and a Best Science Book of 2021 by The Guardian “Rovelli is a genius and an amazing communicator… This is the place where science comes to life.” ―Neil Gaiman “One of the warmest, most elegant and most lucid interpreters to the laity of the dazzling enigmas of his discipline...[a] momentous book” ―John Banville, The Wall Street Journal A startling new look at quantum theory, from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Anaximander. One of the world's most renowned theoretical physicists, Carlo Rovelli has entranced millions of readers with his singular perspective on the cosmos. In Helgoland, he examines the enduring enigma of quantum theory. The quantum world Rovelli describes is as beautiful as it is unnerving. Helgoland is a treeless island in the North Sea where the twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg made the crucial breakthrough for the creation of quantum mechanics, setting off a century of scientific revolution. Full of alarming ideas (ghost waves, distant objects that seem to be magically connected, cats that appear both dead and alive), quantum physics has led to countless discoveries and technological advancements. Today our understanding of the world is based on this theory, yet it is still profoundly mysterious. As scientists and philosophers continue to fiercely debate the meaning of the theory, Rovelli argues that its most unsettling contradictions can be explained by seeing the world as fundamentally made of relationships rather than substances. We and everything around us exist only in our interactions with one another. This bold idea suggests new directions for thinking about the structure of reality and even the nature of consciousness. Rovelli makes learning about quantum mechanics an almost psychedelic experience. Shifting our perspective once again, he takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better comprehend our place in it.
Author: Leonard Susskind
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
Published: 2014-02-25
Total Pages: 386
ISBN-13: 0465036678
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →From the bestselling author of The Theoretical Minimum, a DIY introduction to the math and science of quantum physics First he taught you classical mechanics. Now, physicist Leonard Susskind has teamed up with data engineer Art Friedman to present the theory and associated mathematics of the strange world of quantum mechanics. In this follow-up to The Theoretical Minimum, Susskind and Friedman provide a lively introduction to this famously difficult field, which attempts to understand the behavior of sub-atomic objects through mathematical abstractions. Unlike other popularizations that shy away from quantum mechanics’ weirdness, Quantum Mechanics embraces the utter strangeness of quantum logic. The authors offer crystal-clear explanations of the principles of quantum states, uncertainty and time dependence, entanglement, and particle and wave states, among other topics, and each chapter includes exercises to ensure mastery of each area. Like The Theoretical Minimum, this volume runs parallel to Susskind’s eponymous Stanford University-hosted continuing education course. An approachable yet rigorous introduction to a famously difficult topic, Quantum Mechanics provides a tool kit for amateur scientists to learn physics at their own pace.
Author: John Gribbin
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2019-10-08
Total Pages: 104
ISBN-13: 0262043238
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →“An elegant and accessible” investigation of quantum mechanics for non-specialists—“highly recommended” for students of the sciences, sci-fi fans, and anyone interested in the strange world of quantum physics (Forbes) Rules of the quantum world seem to say that a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time and a particle can be in two places at once. And that particle is also a wave; everything in the quantum world can described in terms of waves—or entirely in terms of particles. These interpretations were all established by the end of the 1920s, by Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, and others. But no one has yet come up with a common sense explanation of what is going on. In this concise and engaging book, astrophysicist John Gribbin offers an overview of six of the leading interpretations of quantum mechanics. Gribbin calls his account “agnostic,” explaining that none of these interpretations is any better—or any worse—than any of the others. Gribbin presents the Copenhagen Interpretation, promoted by Niels Bohr and named by Heisenberg; the Pilot-Wave Interpretation, developed by Louis de Broglie; the Many Worlds Interpretation (termed “excess baggage” by Gribbin); the Decoherence Interpretation (“incoherent”); the Ensemble “Non-Interpretation”; and the Timeless Transactional Interpretation (which theorized waves going both forward and backward in time). All of these interpretations are crazy, Gribbin warns, and some are more crazy than others—but in the quantum world, being more crazy does not necessarily mean more wrong.
Author: Bernd Thaller
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2007-05-08
Total Pages: 283
ISBN-13: 0387227709
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Visual Quantum Mechanics" uses the computer-generated animations found on the accompanying material on Springer Extras to introduce, motivate, and illustrate the concepts explained in the book. While there are other books on the market that use Mathematica or Maple to teach quantum mechanics, this book differs in that the text describes the mathematical and physical ideas of quantum mechanics in the conventional manner. There is no special emphasis on computational physics or requirement that the reader know a symbolic computation package. Despite the presentation of rather advanced topics, the book requires only calculus, making complicated results more comprehensible via visualization. The material on Springer Extras provides easy access to more than 300 digital movies, animated illustrations, and interactive pictures. This book along with its extra online materials forms a complete introductory course on spinless particles in one and two dimensions.
Author: Daniel F. Styer
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
Published: 2022-04-24
Total Pages: 297
ISBN-13: 9789811247903
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →How do atoms and electrons behave? Are they just like marbles, basketballs, suns, and planets, but smaller?They are not. Atoms and electrons behave in a fashion quite unlike the familiar marbles, basketballs, suns, and planets. This sophomore-level textbook delves into the counterintuitive, intricate, but ultimately fascinating world of quantum mechanics. Building both physical insight and mathematical technique, it opens up a new world to the discerning reader.After discussing experimental demonstrations showing that atoms behave differently from marbles, the book builds up the phenomena of the quantum world -- quantization, interference, and entanglement -- in the simplest possible system, the qubit. Once the phenomena are introduced, it builds mathematical machinery for describing them. It goes on to generalize those concepts and that machinery to more intricate systems. Special attention is paid to identical particles, the source of considerable student confusion. In the last chapter, students get a taste of what is not treated in the book and are invited to continue exploring quantum mechanics. Problems in the book test both conceptual and technical knowledge, and invite students to develop their own questions.
Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020-10-14
Total Pages: 382
ISBN-13: 022675510X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seem obvious or right at all—or even possible. An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.
Author: James Kakalios
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2011-11-01
Total Pages: 343
ISBN-13: 1101565519
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Most of us are unaware of how much we depend on quantum mechanics on a day-to-day basis. Using illustrations and examples from science fiction pulp magazines and comic books, The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics explains the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics that underlie the world we live in. Watch a Video
Author: Richard P. Feynman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-10-26
Total Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 140084746X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Celebrated for his brilliantly quirky insights into the physical world, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman also possessed an extraordinary talent for explaining difficult concepts to the general public. Here Feynman provides a classic and definitive introduction to QED (namely, quantum electrodynamics), that part of quantum field theory describing the interactions of light with charged particles. Using everyday language, spatial concepts, visualizations, and his renowned "Feynman diagrams" instead of advanced mathematics, Feynman clearly and humorously communicates both the substance and spirit of QED to the layperson. A. Zee's introduction places Feynman’s book and his seminal contribution to QED in historical context and further highlights Feynman’s uniquely appealing and illuminating style.
Author: David Lindley
Publisher:
Published: 2008-08-06
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 0786725877
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Few revolutions in science have been more far-reaching--but less understood--than the quantum revolution in physics. Everyday experience cannot prepare us for the sub-atomic world, where quantum effects become all-important. Here, particles can look like waves, and vice versa; electrons seem to lose their identity and instead take on a shifting, unpredictable appearance that depends on how they are being observed; and a single photon may sometimes behave as if it could be in two places at once. In the world of quantum mechanics, uncertainty and ambiguity become not just unavoidable, but essential ingredients of science--a development so disturbing that to Einstein "it was as if God were playing dice with the universe." And there is no one better able to explain the quantum revolution as it approaches the century mark than David Lindley. He brings the quantum revolution full circle, showing how the familiar and trustworthy reality of the world around us is actually a consequence of the ineffable uncertainty of the subatomic quantum world--the world we can't see.
