Quantum Mechanics/physics

[bretty]

What is the best books for describing Quantum Physics if i'm not too good at math?

Any recommendations for good books?

[Blue Collar Bohemian]

The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene is probably a pretty good start. It covers General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and then String Theory.

[ComradeRed]

Hmm...I've yet to see any good book on quantum mechanics for the lazy layman. I'd be cautious about studying it too, since there are some physicists (yours truly included) that believe it to be an unfinished theory.

I'd be cautious with Greene's book as he's a string theorist; I've ranted enough on string theory so I won't go off here.

A really great book that is for physicists that just know classical physics is Feynman's third volume on physics. It's the one I studied from, it's fantastic.

It really depends how technical you wanna get, because there are really quite elegant ways of explaining it provided you know physics (viz. Lagrangian/Hamiltonian mechanics). I am, as I've stated, unaware of any introduction to the subject for lazy lay people.

[edit]: Why do you want to learn it? That may help me point you somewhere.

[RebelDog]

I find John Gribbin good. Get yourself a copy of 'In Search of Schrodinger's Cat', I really enjoyed that and I read the follow up too, 'Schrodinger's Kittens' which couldn't beat the first but was worthwhile, for me, anyway. The best books are the ones where the writer can analogise things best for lay understanding and Gribbin is good at it. The very basics of QM theory is hard to understand and the books are a slow careful read. I've read a couple of Greene's books also but as ComradeRed says they ultimately wish to explain super-string theory but that is also very interesting.

There is millions of stuff online about quantum mechanics have a good search, wiki is very good actually. I recommend anyone new to QM to read up on Young's double-slit experiment which is good at laying out a basic empirical reality that makes QM theory so important and indeed shocking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngs_double-slit_experiment

[bretty]

I just want to learn about it for my own sake. Philosophy falls short in the metaphysical category :).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Bretty, I can understand you wanting to educate yourself fully, but you need a good grounding in mathematics even to be able to begin to grapple with this theory.

Popularisations (like those found in Gribbin, or Greene on String Theory, and even those produced by physicists themselves other than these two) substitute metaphysical ideas for genuine science, and since they are amateur metaphysicians, they not only cannot see this, it's not very good metaphysics, either.

So, Greene opts for instrumentalism when he tries to explain the physical significance of the mathematics he discusses, which undermines its 'objectivity' (but then slides into full-blown Platonism elsewhere to account for its 'objectivity'), and Gribbin is a sort of confused Platonist (as is Penrose).

Now I try to explain why this is so (and is unavoidable) in a future Essay I will be posting in the next year or so.

Briefly, it is connected with the nature of language -- how it originally served as a means of communication when human beings first invented it (to facilitate collective labour and communal living), but was later turned into a representational device when the ruling-class tried to use it to picture the invisible nature of the gods, and then when they turned this into metaphysics (in ancient Greece), in order to depict an allegedly abstract world behind appearances (to rationalise class rule).

Language does not work too well when used in the latter way (which is one of the main messages you find in Wittgenstein's later work), since, in order to do this, theorists have to use metaphor, analogy, neologisms, and they have to reify abstract nouns (and change verbs into nouns -- e.g. "is" becomes "Being") to make it work.

They are then 'held captive by the pictures they paint', to paraphrase Wittgenstein, and they then substitute the rules they have used to derive their conclusions for real objects and processes in nature, or underlying it. In trying to represent the world to themselves using a medium not suited to this end, they have to distort that medium, and it all ends up as non-sense.

No wonder few understand QM when translated into ordinary language; it cannot be done (except by the use of metaphor upon metaphor....).

Unless you really have to, I'd skip this theory if I were you.

[Noah]

You guys mention being good at maths, do people (perhaps I'm pointing this question at CR & Rosa) practise maths in their spare time as a hobby or have/do you guys study physics?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Noah, I have a degree in mathematics, and CR is a PhD student (I think!) in Physics.

[JimFar]

I have a degree in physics, myself. If there is a good introduction to quantum mechanics that does not presuppose a good knowledge of mathematics on the reader's part, then I am unaware of it. Lot of people have attempted to write popularizations of quantum mechanics for the lay reader. Lots of people have failed. I wish it was otherwise.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 09:33 am
You guys mention being good at maths, do people (perhaps I'm pointing this question at CR & Rosa) practise maths in their spare time as a hobby or have/do you guys study physics?
I'm studying physics, but I've been doing it as a hobby for years independently at the California Institute of Technology. Most classical physics is common sense, so I have a good grounding in undergraduate stuff and looked into the graduate level stuff early on (viz. quantum gravity and foundational problems in quantum theory, i.e. answering the question "Why is quantum physics so fucked up?").

My friend got me a joke mail-order PhD (so henceforth, I will only answer to Dr. ComradeRed :lol:), but I don't have a real degree yet.

Due to personal reasons, not academic ones, I decided to go to college and right now I'm an old fart freshman at UC Davis. I'm studying independently with Dr. Carlip too ;) So I'm an anomaly, not the rule; though I don't see why anyone else can't do it.

And the best introduction to the subject that I've seen that cuts the crap and gets to the good stuff is by Christopher Isham, although it is presupposing that you know the math (which may or may not be the case). For conceptual understanding, I would suggest Feynman's third volume.

[Noah]

Ha sweet, well I'm only 15 I think I will work more on my maths for about another year before delving into difficult stuff like this.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 10:57 am
Ha sweet, well I'm only 15 I think I will work more on my maths for about another year before delving into difficult stuff like this.
Rule of thumb: it takes 10 years before you get exceptionally good at anything.

Mozart composed the best music 10 years after he began. His first stuff wasn't that great.

There are other examples, but I'm too lazy to think of them.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 06:58 pm
Rule of thumb: it takes 10 years before you get exceptionally good at anything.

Mozart composed the best music 10 years after he began. His first stuff wasn't that great.

There are other examples, but I'm too lazy to think of them.
In his first 10 years of political theorizing Marx invented the political ideologies of capitalism, fascism, and institutionalized dog-raping.

Anywho, I myself am quite interested in maths but only on an incredibly low academic level, and unfortunately as I am choosing to go for Law as my first choice in Uni and so will probably not be following up on my interest in maths or the sciences.

Off topic I know, but meh.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Noah, plenty of time to catch up; I was only average at mathematics at 15!

[Janus]

I would probably recommend beginner's guides to the subject and perhaps some of Feynman's lectures and works if you're new to this subject.

[mikelepore]

I recently wrote a book review of Rosenblum and Kuttner, Quantum Enigma : Physics Encounters Consciousness.

http://www.crimsonbird.com/science/quantum-enigma.htm

I bashed the authors for bending over backwards to give a greater hearing to the interpretation that "objective reality" doesn't exist, even after they themselves disposed of that interpretation by explaining why the wave equation always collapses immediately for macroscopic objects.

[AGramsci]

Originally posted by Blue Collar [email protected] 07, 2007 04:13 am
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene is probably a pretty good start. It covers General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and then String Theory.
Brian Greene is the best theoretical physicist, in my opinion, whose books make the understanding of complicated matters of relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory accessible to laypeople.

But I have read The Elegant Universe and it was very good, but I found his newer book The Fabric of The Cosmos more enjoyable. Fabric has much more to do with the nature of time and space than does Elegant, which reads more like a history of physics.