I was recently asked to recommend a good popular-level book on quantum mechanics. I don’t think I know of any, at least not first hand. We had a whole thread on the Greatest Popular Science Book, filled with good suggestions, but none specifically about quantum mechanics. A quick glance through amazon.com reveals plenty of books on particle physics, or even specific notions like quantum computing, but not one book that I could recommend in good conscience to someone who just wants to know what quantum mechanics is all about. It is the greatest intellectual achievement of the twentieth century, after all.
There are some books that either come close, or might very well be perfect but I’m not familiar with them. In the latter category we have The Quantum World by Ken Ford, and David Lindley’s Where Does the Weirdness Go? These might be great, I just haven’t read them. I’m sure that the Mr. Tompkins books by George Gamow are good, since I love One, Two, Three… Infinity (and Gamow was a genius), but I haven’t actually read them. Feynman’s QED is another classic, but focuses more on quantum electrodynamics (duh) than on QM more generally. David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality is a fantastic book, especially if you are curious about the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics; but I’m not sure if it’s the best first introduction (I haven’t looked at it closely in years). And David Albert’s Quantum Mechanics and Experience is great for a careful philosophical account of what QM is all about, but again maybe not the best first exposure.
Any suggestions? Not for a good book that is related to quantum mechanics or perhaps mentions it in a chapter or two, but for something whose major goal is to provide a clear account of QM. Surely there is something?
Thank you nc. I now understand your point of view perfectly and see that it
was an error to engage you on this topic. And I won’t chase flush draws.
“Quite simply, a book on QM has yet to be written.” — How true. And thanks to Paul Valletta for the precious link. It says in the abstract that
I am pleased as a punch, for I keep reiterating till I’m blue in the face that the transmogrification of a probability algorithm into an evolving instantaneous state is at the root of the whole semantic mess.
How about The Dancing Wu-Ii Masters by Gary Zukov?
All beginners should read the 1857 version of rumpelstilskin, the stories always come before the equations, it’s easier to understand and it’s from the point of view of Schrödinger cat http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm055.html. “CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT” just before Schrödinger did, The Washington Post on 4 March 1916. Coincidences?
Qubit
When I studied freshman physics and chemistry (admittedly a million years ago) I was glad I’d read “The Strange Story of the Quantum” by Banesh Hoffman.
For laymen, I would recomend a less technical or complex book such as The Strange Theory Of the Quantum, but if you feel you must challenge your mental capacity then read The Universe in a Nutshell by Dr. Hawking. I would advise taking notes in some chapters because of the complexity of the equations, such as Hawking radiation or as it can be used to Find black hole entropy properties, which i attempted to solve for myself and ended up with a negative value so i believe i have either accidentally reproduced Hawking’s time travel theory or just mistook G for the wrong quantitive value….
I have a website called Watered Down Physics, where I — a non-physicist — try to explain physics concepts for a general audience. I do a lot of reading in physics and the entries on my webpage represent my distillation of this material. Because I’m not a trained physicist, I make sure to stick closely to original source material.
http://watered-down-physics.blogspot.com
In the summer and fall of 2005, I wrote a series of essays on quantum mechanics, with plenty of external links. My writings on quantum mechanics appear on the following 2005 entry dates (see the archives section on my site):
July 27: Intro to Quantum Mechanics
August 2: Double-Slit Experiments
August 13: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
September 3: Quantum Entanglement
September 10: Probabilistic Elements, Copenhagen Interpretation, Many Worlds Interpretation
September 22: Discrete Units, Bohr Atom Model
The Quantum Zoo by Marcus Chown is a fantastic and very interesting read for the total-non-physicist.
Chown begins each chapter with a paragraph story, and then starts walking you through the very basic theory, leading right up to an “AHA” moment where the reader spots the connection between the story at the beginning of the chapter and the theory that has been presented. Just to be sure you got it, Chown spells it out, and then goes deeper into the theory once the reader has grasped it.
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Leon Lederman’s “The God Particle”. I thought it was fascinating and entertaining, even if the name is unfortunate.
I am not a high fallutin theoretician. Just a simple Materials Scientist; however, since I have read Feynman’s lectures and especially his analysis of the electrical self-energy of an electron; I have been perturbed by this problem. I believe that it also lies at the root of renormalisation in QED. It seems to me that one will never be able to really understand QM or QED if one cannot solve this problem without requiring renormalisation; and this I believe could lead to a reinterpretation of QM and QED.
The question I would like to ask is the following: How do one knows that there exists an electric energy field around a solitary charge. As Heisenberg has argued, if you cannot measure it, it probably does not exist. So how do you measure the existence of this field? One cannot do so by using a “test charge”, because then you do not have a solitary charge anymore! Furthermore according to Coulomb’s law you only have an interaction between seperated charges. When you set one of the charges equal to zero, the force goes to zero. Could it be that there is NO electric field energy around a solitary charge, and that by calculating this energy around an electron charge one calculates something that does not exist. My humble experience has led my to believe that when one finds infinities in a theory you are, most probably, calculating something that does not exist. Any comments to redirect, or renormalise, me?
Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku is brilliant…it’ll take you from the beginning to the end of time and back again whilst using all types of physics including QP to illustrate the journey…