Customer Reviews

Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I used this text book for my undergraduate quantum mechanics class. In that class, we covered basically everything in Griffiths. I have since gone on to graduate school. I have found myself very well prepared and I still use Griffiths as a reference because it explains basic ideas and basic problems better than most other text books. More importantly, it provided me with a good foundation for further study.

This text book is a great introductory text book. It is a text book for students for whom quantum mechanics is a new subject. It is not a text book for people who already know any significant amount of quantum mechanics, nor is it a great text to use for independent study (unless you work the problems and have some way of checking yourself.)

Shankar is too advanced for most students new to the subject. It's also too much material to cover in a standard two semester course where the material is completely new. The only school I know of which uses it is Yale, and they count on students having a stronger background than most students at most schools have. Moreover, I know from personal experience that teachers at Yale focus on getting students to calculate the right answer rather than developing a solid understanding of the ideas behind the physics.

It's also too much material to cover in a standard two semester course where the material is completely new. Griffiths is designed such that it can be used for the quantum mechanics classes at most universities -- ie, if students haven't had every other physics class before they use this book or if some of their background is a little weak, they aren't screwed. This may not agree with some people's notions of how physics should be taught, but the reality is that you can't teach every physics class as if the students had already mastered every subject except that one. This is the reality at most universities.

The fact that this book is accessible does not make it bad. Physics is a wonderful, beautiful subject and we're being really stupid if we judge how "advanced" a book is by how difficult it is to understand. This is a suicidal attitude for our field. I've been reading physics books for a long time, and most of the ones which are difficult to read are difficult because they're not well written, not because the material is inherently difficult.

This book also cannot compensate for its misuse or for bad teaching. When I took the class, the teacher assigned some of the basic problems and some of the difficult problems. That way we made sure we knew the basics before we moved on to the difficult problems. If you're only doing the simple problems, it's your fault you're not getting anything out of it. If you're only doing the computationally difficult problems, you're missing some beautiful, simple examples. The physics is neither more real nor more important if it takes you a day to calculate rather than ten minutes.

This is a problem-centered book, but honestly, that's the way most of us learn. We don't remember things we read as well as we remember things we do. Similarly, new notation is not introduced until later because ideas are being developed first. Introducing too many things at once does not facilitate learning, only frustration. I suggest the people who think they already understand all of the ideas consider what Feynmann said -- "Nobody really understands quantum mechanics."

If you want answers, look them up. If you want to learn, use this book.

I liked Griffith's Introduction to Quantum Mechanics a great deal. I liked his Electrodynamics book too. What I like most about Griffiths is that if something is important he will say so, if something is difficult he will say so, if something confounds everyone who sees it he will say so. Many other authors in physics pretend to be computers, and leave any intuition or feeling about the material they introduce entirely to the reader to learn for himself. We are not computers, we all understand things in very human ways, although I think the proud like to pretend everything is obvious to them and that personal comments such as Griffiths provides just insults their prodigous intelligence.
The only problem I have with the book is that the shmucks didn't put a single answer in there. That's why I didn't give it 5 stars. How are you supposed to learn it if you don't know where you might have gone wrong in your answers?

The best introduction to quantum mechanics around, without doubt. Griffiths knows how to drive home the key concepts. Insufficient for a graduate student, but a highly desirable supplement to Shankar/Cohen-Tannoudji because Griffiths reminds you what is and what is not important concisely. There is no question that this book is brilliantly written. The smartest people are those who understand how to say things concisely and to the point, not pretentious people who hide behind equations and jargon because they cannot communicate ideas. Griffiths is obviously a very smart man.

This is written as a graduate physicist.

People who say that this book is insufficiently rigorous tend to be (but not necessarily) intellectual snobs who want to impress themselves and others by saying "Oh, Griffiths is too low level for me, I'm so great..." This is an INTRODUCTION, and that's what it serves to do...science was created by men based on intuition and logical clues, not by the gods of math (and I'd argue most of what is key in math came from mathematical clues and intuition before the proofs and notation...before derivatives and integrals were well defined, people were using them to solve physical problems).

I have read the first 4 chapters of the 1st Ed, and carefully looked at the 2nd. The book is an introduction to wave mechanics, starting with the Schrodinger Eq on the first page! It feels like he doesn't begin at the begining. He should at least give brief comments on the development of quantum ideas (both wave and matrix) and JUSTIFY why the wave approach is more suited as an introduction. What are the advantages and disadvantages?
All these jumps add up: when you try to work the problems you are working with wavefunctions like you've known them all your life! One could find this and that, but I was never sure how the results could be used (in an experimental setting for example). What system does this wavefunction represent, or at least approximate, give the reader some motivation for working on a problem for almost an hour.
I would also say the book is dull, because the author explains every single math step he takes. Sometimes it is helpful, but most of the time it kills the thrill. In places where things are harder to explain in details this approach is abandoned; in chapter 3 you'll find plenty of math rushed. In the 2nd Ed. the author breaks some of the more basic part of Ch. 3 into an appendix, but doesn't really improve on the writing. Apperantly it is believed that students of physics have never heard of seperation of variables but are at home with complex vector spaces. This is an unjustifiable approach. I bet if you take an average linear algebra course in US, you won't encounter: complex vector spaces, properties of hermitian matricies, not too much on diagonaliztion and change of basis. The 2nd Ed. does add 3-4 more examples in each chapter; that should save some problem solving time. But I am afraid important things such as properties of the wavefunction are still left as excercises. I was generally bored and sometimes confused in my time with book. Due to lack of interesting physical (ideal or real) examples, I felt like I was collecting ideas rather than exploring them. Also since every (easy) step is shown, the chapters desperately need a good summary. I usually read the summary before the chapter itself to get motivation. I think things mentioned above should be improved on. Schuam's outline book won't help you much with problems in this book, that book solves problems of a more general nature.
Towards perfection:
A good alternative is: "Quantum mechanics: a modern introduction' by Das and Melissinos (1986, Gordon and Breach). It is full of great physical examples. I call it an 'alternative' because its
introduction of wave mechanics is not as complete as Griffith-like books. The wave approach, taken by Griffiths, suits some problems better than others in applications (like the eight other approaches to QM ,including the vector) but it also gives a 'can't see the forest for the trees' felling, the vector approach goes to the heart of QM. Fear not though, Das and Melissinos do provide a good introduction to wave mechanics. The best replacement for Griffiths is, A.C. Phillips 'Intro to QM' (Wiley, 2003). This is a nice, clear, as physical as you can get with waves approach to QM. Another great (good as Das & Melissinos, but slightly less 'physical') book is H.C. Ohanian 'Principles of quantum mechanics' (1990, Prentice Hall) which is nice and clear unified (uses both waves and vectors) presentation of quantum mehcanics.
Ohanian's text makes an excellent companion to Sakurai's Modern Quantum Mechanics, which is the the best book
ever written on Non-Relativistic QM.

Pros:
1. Griffiths has a knack for clearly elucidating each concept, and strikes a good balance between verbiosity and conciseness. This makes the book an easy read.
2. There are plenty of excercises rangeing from easy to relatively difficult in each section.
3. The book covers a lot of ground, and is good as a first exposure to some upper level concepts (statistal mech., solid state phys, systems identical particles).
4. He spends some time covering the philisophical implications of the subject, which is really important.

Cons:
1. The first couple of chapters let you get comfortable with the Schroedinger formulation in 1D, but I feel like he focuses a little too much on calculations (of expectation values, uncertainties, etc...) This amounts to a lot of integration, without a whole lot of insight. (However he makes up for this in Chapter 3 when he introduces the formalism)
2. The book's good for a first (undergraduate) introduction to QM, but it doesn't go in depth on a lot of the topics it covers. It does a pretty good job on perturbation theory, but kind of skimps on Angular Momentum, symmetries, etc... Also it doesn't do anything with the path integral formulation.
3. The relatively low level of rigor means that this isn't a good upper level book.

Conclusion: Good introductory book, but you'll need more eventually.

This is perhaps the best introduction to quantum mechanics one can get out there. This book follows a very unique and, in my opinion, quite effective path to the basic ideas of quantum mechanics. What I mean is that it does not follow the historical developments of the subject in the early part of the last century like some of the introductory texts do, nor does it take the axiomatic approach like some of the more advanced texts.

The author starts the story by throwing the one-dimensional Schroedinger's equation in the position representation right at you so that you will get acquainted with the wave mechanical view of quantum mechanics as soon as possible. You get to see a few important solutions to the equation in one-dimension and get a rough feel of some of the deeper concepts such as the uncertainty principle, wave-paricle duality, position-momentum conjugacy in a very technical and concrete way. He then introduce the abstract mathematical setting of quantum mechanics and generalize the statistical interpretation. He presents the solution to the hydrogen atom and then introduces angular momentum, which I personally think would be better done in the reversed oder. He then introduces the idea of identical particles and gives a very crude preview of systems of many particles. The above constitutes the first part of the book. In the second part, the author devotes mostly to the applications such as finer spectrum of hydrogen atom using perturbation theory, the variational method and scattering, etc. I think the author's approach has turn out to be very effective in my one-year-long experience in learning the subject.

The problems in the book are very helpful and well organized. There are simple-minded derivations as well as structured problems that require very involved soltuions. But overall the problems seem to be a bit too computational.

This book is very good for one to start learning quantum mechanics and that is perhaps why it is so popular throughout the universities in the US. The author is very clear in terms of his writing. A few more things I think would be helpful for beginningers. The book completely ignores the historical developments, such as some of the extremely important experiments done in the early 1900s. I think these are things one should know about before delving into this book. For more ambitious students, this book is far from being rigous and complete. It does not present a complete and coherent treatment of the abstract formalism. Symmetries and conversation laws are not mentioned. The Heisenburg picture appears in only one problem. The author does too much of his hand-waving trick in the later part of the book. And more. So for a more advanced treatment, I would suggest Shankar which is also extremely lucid. Sakurai is also very excellent and certainly very inspiring in terms of the materials but may be a bit more cumbersome for less experienced readers. For a completely rigorous, concise, as well as up-to-date treatment, Gottfried & Yan seems to be a good pick, which I am trying to ponder through myself.

First, I would like to say that this book IS: thourough enough for undergrads, extremely well written, contains good problems and is excellent preparation for grad-level courses.

Next, I would like to say that I don't think that reviewers who complain about this book have spent much time studying it. To the reviewers that complain that the text is not advanced enough I would say that the book is intended as an undergraduate text. If you know it well, you will prepared for a more advanced text like sakuri, messiah, etc(if jumping into these texts without a prior introduction is suitable for you, well then enjoy MIT.) I found this book to be very easy to read, contained great problems and gave me an excellent preparation for graduate QM. If I have any complaints about the text it would be that more dirac notation isn't used. However, the book contains eliciting questions and most importantly it teaches you QM.

I originally took a one semester undergrad class in QM and used a text by Gasiorowitz (I definately don't reccomend it.) The summer before Graduate school I was aware that I knew almost nothing of QM and I had liked Griffith's EM book, so I thought I would try his QM. I studied Griffiths text independently for the two summer months. I read chapters 1-8 and portions of later chapters. I also completed all of his starred problems in chapters 1-4 and many of the starred problems from chapters 5-8.

Using Griffiths text was one of the best decisions I have made in learning physics. I was very well prepared for my graduate QM classes. I would like to commend David Griffiths for his book. His writing style makes physics accessible by studying on your own. Not too many other authors of physics can do this.

I didn't use this book undergraduate quantum, I used Saxon. And for graduate I used Merzbacher and also Cohen-Tenoudji. But now I'm preparing myself for the qualifier, and I've found that I've put aside all of my quantum mechanics books and I'm using this one. (I've also put aside all of my E&M books and I'm using Griffith's book for that part of the Quali too.) This book obviously doesn't have the depth of a lot of other quantum books, and it isn't designed to. I gets you into the subject, shows you what you need to know and moves you along to the next subject. But what makes the book excellent is a simple "rating" system that Griffith uses. He puts one star next to problems that are fundamental importance yet won't take hours to work through. This is valuable for review. If you're using this book for review, I also think that having a solutions manual for the problems to check your work is useful, you can pick them up on ebay. Griffith makes books for people like me, non-genius students educated in U.S. public schools. We don't want to be bored while we're learning. He keeps things interesting.

This book will take you through the core topics on quantum mechanics. As a confirmation of the author's statement that quantum mechanics is conceptually rich (p. vii) this book indeed introduces you to topics encompassing but no limited to thermal physics, statistical physics, solid state physics, chemistry, optics, astrophysics, that should give you an indication for its wide spectrum of applications. You will encounter a wide gamut of familiar physical concepts here such as Bohr radius, Rutherford scattering and lasers.

The text is well explained and easy to follow, the problems are doable. Be prepared for the math though. Before reading this book I suggest that you do groundwork on engineering math comprising functions of a complex variable, series solutions of differential equations, probability theory and linear algebra. There is one thing I can't get from books on quantum mechanics including this one: an elucidation on the development of the Schroedinger equation.

This book will serve you well in preparing for a more advanced reading in quantum mechanics. I personally find it indispensable in being literate in texts about semiconductor physics, opto- and microelectronics.

Update: PS. Recently I've been told by a physicist that the Schroedinger equation is taken as a postulate without proof.

It appears I have overused the book as evidenced by its having gone out of binding.

I really like the way Griffith explains Quantum. Contents are well organized and make sense all the way through. My professor likes to use Gasiorowicz, but that book doesn't make much sense to me. So I supplemented it with Griffith and found it explains very well.