It's wrong to assume people know classical physics formalism well and then and only then, they'll learn QM!
QM pedagogy problem is, how to teach QM to people who don't know physics beyond [F= ma], and math beyond algebra, differential calculus, & virtually no probability beyond mean & std dev?
Nice effort. As far as textbooks for QM, Electrodynamics, and any sufficiently complex field of study goes, I always feel that these have been written using abstractions that people have developed much later retroactively. I understand the advantages: it makes the entire content concise, structured, and basically straightforward. However, what I crave is a technical book that is based upon the history of the subject. Something that doesn't start immediately with Hilbert spaces but starts off by talking about why Max Plank did what he did, how did Einstein improve upon it, what mistakes were made, what misguided hypothesis were later corrected in what manner, how were different things then unified... you get the point. I think this narrative based approach would motivate me much better than something that's condensed and distilled.
Most Physics undergraduate programs have a course on Modern Physics, which is often taught in the way you are asking for. Though only up to the origins of quantum mechanics. This textbook, for example does this [1].
The problem is that after the basics of QM, there were literally hundreds of papers by dozens of important scientists developing the subsequent theory. And you can no longer teach the subject in a linear historical fashion.
I think the book called "Quantum mechanics" by max Planck and Neil bohr is quite similar to what you need. And atleast in my country it's available for less than 2.5$ usd converted so it's pretty damn cheap
However of course I think you'd be able to find an ebook about it too
Just include max Planck and neil bohr as the authors lol.
The introduction to Vol 1 of Weinberg’s Quantum Theory of Fields does this really well, albeit briefly. It feels like getting an “insider’s view” of the historical developments.
This is fantastic, although the statement about the intended audience cracked me up a bit: "intended for a general audience including ... anyone interested in a concise intro/overview of QM. Prerequisites: linear algebra, calculus, ..."
The PDF is essentially higher math with QM-related narrative interspersed here and there. Even if you're a STEM graduate, I found that these skills atrophy pretty quickly if you're not using them day-to-day in your work. Scientists often vastly overestimate how conversant their readers are with "obvious" prerequisites such as vector calculus.
And you can often tell on HN, because you have a thread where two mathematicians chat with each other, and then everyone else is just relating anecdotes about quantum mechanics.
It's like when the doctor says "this won't hurt at all". It WILL hurt your brain, QM is not easy.
I'm looking for a QM book structured similar to Norvig LISP books, ie following a demonstrative didactic method, by building computational implementations of toy models demonstrating various aspects of QM (not just QC), toy models of resonator, particle in a box, etc
One issue: 'classical mechanics' section doesn't introduce Hamiltonian, and instead it's introduced in chapter 2.2 as if it is a QM concept.
In my uni Classical Mechanics course was a pre-requisite to QM to ensure that students have a good intuition about Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms, because those are non-trivial concepts by themselves.
Off topic, but the utility of the Hamiltonian is debatable.
You can solve any problem by using only the Lagrangian, there is really no need for the Hamiltonian, which also has the disadvantage of not being relativistically invariant, like the Lagrangian.
Also the name of "Hamiltonian" is somewhat misused. The most important contribution of Hamilton has been the definition of Hamilton's integral, i.e. the integral over time of the Lagrangian. That is an extremely important function and it would have deserved better the name of "Hamiltonian", than the less important Hamiltonian, which also was not introduced for the first time by Hamilton.
How to transform the system of equations of Lagrange to the "Hamiltonian" form had already been described by Poisson, and then by Cauchy, the latter using a form exactly equivalent to that presented later by Hamilton.
The notation H for the Hamiltonian has nothing to do with the name of Hamilton. Lagrange had used H for this quantity in 1811, without giving any meaning to the letter, then Hamilton in 1834 has reused the notations of Lagrange, adding "function S" for Hamilton's integral, also without giving any meanings to the letters.
Nice, I like how you start out with the finite dimensional case here. Personally though, I don't think I really "got" quantum mechanics until I saw Bell's inequality, so I prefer to put that front and center.
Maybe a pointless nitpick, but is a PDF on GitHub really the best way to distribute this though? I guess you also didn't want to give away the .tex file? arXiv is usually the best place to upload these kinds of notes so they can be indexed and easily found.
As a member of the general audience I was disappointed to find no color illustrations. Faced with walls of text and an absence of enjoyable distraction and marginalia, I began to think (which rarely happens) "wouldn't the relevant audience desire more mathematical equations?". And then I closed the pdf.
It's wrong to assume people know classical physics formalism well and then and only then, they'll learn QM!
QM pedagogy problem is, how to teach QM to people who don't know physics beyond [F= ma], and math beyond algebra, differential calculus, & virtually no probability beyond mean & std dev?
Nice effort. As far as textbooks for QM, Electrodynamics, and any sufficiently complex field of study goes, I always feel that these have been written using abstractions that people have developed much later retroactively. I understand the advantages: it makes the entire content concise, structured, and basically straightforward. However, what I crave is a technical book that is based upon the history of the subject. Something that doesn't start immediately with Hilbert spaces but starts off by talking about why Max Plank did what he did, how did Einstein improve upon it, what mistakes were made, what misguided hypothesis were later corrected in what manner, how were different things then unified... you get the point. I think this narrative based approach would motivate me much better than something that's condensed and distilled.
Most Physics undergraduate programs have a course on Modern Physics, which is often taught in the way you are asking for. Though only up to the origins of quantum mechanics. This textbook, for example does this [1].
The problem is that after the basics of QM, there were literally hundreds of papers by dozens of important scientists developing the subsequent theory. And you can no longer teach the subject in a linear historical fashion.
[1] https://www.cengage.com/c/modern-physics-3e-serway-moses-moy...
I think the book called "Quantum mechanics" by max Planck and Neil bohr is quite similar to what you need. And atleast in my country it's available for less than 2.5$ usd converted so it's pretty damn cheap However of course I think you'd be able to find an ebook about it too Just include max Planck and neil bohr as the authors lol.
The introduction to Vol 1 of Weinberg’s Quantum Theory of Fields does this really well, albeit briefly. It feels like getting an “insider’s view” of the historical developments.
The book “quantum” was a great read. Doesn’t really delve into any theories, but covers the general story of the physicists on the eve of QM
Hi. Could you please name the author. Is it this one? https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Einstein-Debate-Nature-Realit... Thanks.
That's not a book about QM but about "philosophy" of how QM is interpreted. Even if you master every word in it, you won't be able to do any real QM.
Besides, Einstein is just about the worst physicist to learn from on QM
This is fantastic, although the statement about the intended audience cracked me up a bit: "intended for a general audience including ... anyone interested in a concise intro/overview of QM. Prerequisites: linear algebra, calculus, ..."
The PDF is essentially higher math with QM-related narrative interspersed here and there. Even if you're a STEM graduate, I found that these skills atrophy pretty quickly if you're not using them day-to-day in your work. Scientists often vastly overestimate how conversant their readers are with "obvious" prerequisites such as vector calculus.
And you can often tell on HN, because you have a thread where two mathematicians chat with each other, and then everyone else is just relating anecdotes about quantum mechanics.
It's like when the doctor says "this won't hurt at all". It WILL hurt your brain, QM is not easy.
I'm looking for a QM book structured similar to Norvig LISP books, ie following a demonstrative didactic method, by building computational implementations of toy models demonstrating various aspects of QM (not just QC), toy models of resonator, particle in a box, etc
I’ve been writing something like that for a bit, not ready yet but there’s hope! ^^
One issue: 'classical mechanics' section doesn't introduce Hamiltonian, and instead it's introduced in chapter 2.2 as if it is a QM concept.
In my uni Classical Mechanics course was a pre-requisite to QM to ensure that students have a good intuition about Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms, because those are non-trivial concepts by themselves.
Off topic, but the utility of the Hamiltonian is debatable.
You can solve any problem by using only the Lagrangian, there is really no need for the Hamiltonian, which also has the disadvantage of not being relativistically invariant, like the Lagrangian.
Also the name of "Hamiltonian" is somewhat misused. The most important contribution of Hamilton has been the definition of Hamilton's integral, i.e. the integral over time of the Lagrangian. That is an extremely important function and it would have deserved better the name of "Hamiltonian", than the less important Hamiltonian, which also was not introduced for the first time by Hamilton.
How to transform the system of equations of Lagrange to the "Hamiltonian" form had already been described by Poisson, and then by Cauchy, the latter using a form exactly equivalent to that presented later by Hamilton.
The notation H for the Hamiltonian has nothing to do with the name of Hamilton. Lagrange had used H for this quantity in 1811, without giving any meaning to the letter, then Hamilton in 1834 has reused the notations of Lagrange, adding "function S" for Hamilton's integral, also without giving any meanings to the letters.
Nice, I like how you start out with the finite dimensional case here. Personally though, I don't think I really "got" quantum mechanics until I saw Bell's inequality, so I prefer to put that front and center.
Maybe a pointless nitpick, but is a PDF on GitHub really the best way to distribute this though? I guess you also didn't want to give away the .tex file? arXiv is usually the best place to upload these kinds of notes so they can be indexed and easily found.
As I understand it, arXiv is for research-level original work , not for uploading textbooks or notes.
As a member of the general audience I was disappointed to find no color illustrations. Faced with walls of text and an absence of enjoyable distraction and marginalia, I began to think (which rarely happens) "wouldn't the relevant audience desire more mathematical equations?". And then I closed the pdf.