Customer Reviews

Introduction to Quantum Mechanics

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This introductory text by Griffiths has two major advantages: first it is exceedingly interesting to read, at such an extent one could believe the material is easy. Exercises are challenging enough to show it is just an impression. Second, the text covers a rather big amount of the (non-relativistic) theory, in a concision which is exemplar. It is a short text, which travels in the corners of the field: quantum statistics, solid state physics, perturbation theories, scattering... Of course the counterpart is those topics aren't dealt with at depth. This is a book to see things, before to work on them. For all those reasons, it is a very, very bad reference, but it is not its purpose. For example, the bra and ket formalism is introduced a bit lately, and its use is not stressed. The functional notation for what is currently referred to as |n, l, m> conceals the power of Dirac notations. Tensor product of Hilbert space are completely omitted, thus obscuring the (short but important) section on angular momenta, especially their addition. However, following the book's spirit, you have an opportunity to see Clebsch-Gordan coefficients at work, with their pretty cascading tables.

The book is accessible without serious prerequisites, not even in electromagnetism, you just need to know the basis of calculus. Therefore it is the text to get if as a beginner you want to get acquainted with this fundamental piece of physics, along with learning your first physical theories (mechanics or electromagnetism). For others, it is useless to they who ever know pretty much of the theory, even as a review. To students who encounter this strange world for the first time, but with a fierce amount of classical knowledge on their back, I recommend it either as a companion to a more demanding detailed text--Shankar seeming the perfect pick--or as the only text if tremendous amount of personal work is to be furnished to fill in and explore by oneself what is missing. I wouldn't rely too much on it however.

I had previously written a review of this text based upon my experiences with it first semester, dealing mostly with chapters 1-4. Upon further reading of the book and comparison to various other texts (the Baym, Sakurai and Shankar, specifically), I have decided that I need to rewrite my review.

First off, the good side: If you're interested in a wave mechanics approach to learning quantum mechanics, this book isn't horrible. You certainly learn a lot about solving differential equations, although you are never asked to solve any yourself. Also, the problems for the students to work range from the insanely trivial to the intriguingly difficult. Now for the bad part...

Well, the problem with those worked problems is that there is a lot of important stuff in the problems, and Griffiths assumes you have worked every single problem. This wouldn't be an issue, except most of the chapters have over 50 problems, and the odds that you did the right problem you need when he references that problem three chapters later is pretty slim.

Also, he does not introduce you to the Dirac notation or the linear algebra approach to quantum mechanics until the third chapter, after which he promptly discards that powerful tool in favor of the way he had been going, which is with wave mechanics. So he deprives the readers of knowledge of a remarkably useful language to discuss quantum mechanics.

He begins with the Schrodinger equation, without any motivation at all, and proceeds from there. He could start out talking about two level systems, the collapse of the state vector, eigenvalue measurements and all that long before getting into infinite-dimensional systems, but he seems to think that solving a differential equation without explaining what the Schrodinger equation actually is (the Hamiltonian operator) or giving any idea of its physical significance.

Some problems are absurdly ambiguous to the point that you really wonder what exactly you're supposed to do, and the working of nontrivial examples is few and far between (with exceptions being the hydrogen atom and the raising and lowering operators for the various applications of those).

Because I don't want to conclude being completely negative, I would like to point out that the sections on approximation methods are very good and easy to follow.

I think everyone else put it best when they said that this is quantum mechanics for those with no mathematical inclination, and if you are a physics major with no mathematical inclination, I have to question your choice of study. For those serious about learning quantum mechanics, purchase the Shankar, it's cheaper and much more fulfilling.

This is a well-written, beautifully done text for beginners. Though not a brilliant book like Dicke-Wittke (which sparked at every page and, alas, is out-of-print), it brings the message. Besides the more usual topics, I particularly liked the treatment of adiabatic processes and the Berry phase, which is the best I met in textbooks. The exercises are effective, and vary from routine to tough. I've met at least one which slightly strains, in its wording, the laws of electromagnetism. But I liked to teach from it, and, better, the students loved it. I wish I had a text like this when I fought against old Schiff, centuries ago!

Griffiths treads an unconventional, good-humored path in this book. Instead of starting, as many introductions to quantum mechanics do, with historical interpretations that lead up to the particle-wave equation, he jumps head-first into problems and examples. This text would be very difficult to tackle alone, but under the tutelage of a good instructor (to help with problems that could very well take all day) is well worth the effort. He never goes too deep, and comes closest to the median, that is, he writes at a level understandable to undergraduates. My biggest vice is his lack of physical or experimental examples; they seem to be an addendum to the mathematics. Also, it sticks to the Schrodinger interpretation nearly throughout, which I think is preferable as an intro to QM, but some fancy graduate students might whine (I think one or two problems deals with the Heisenberg/Linear Algebra approach, and some Singlet, Triplet stuff uses matrices, etc. but that's easy). He brings on some fairly traditional problems, so a student who doesn't have a strong math background might want to get another book as a reference. Like the other reviewer said, there are some very algebraically difficult problems that don't really emphasis conceptual understanding, but QM is hard work, so if you wanna get cookin' this is the book for you.

David Griffiths concentrates on the classic and important QM proplems, such as the Schrodinger equation, the finite square well, the delta function potential, the hydrogen atom, spin, etc. He does not touch on QM "side line" issues. Thus the students efforts are most efficient. Griffiths develops each subject in a balanced and easy to understand way. His book could be home studied without assistance from an instructor, which is certainly not true of many QM texts. The exercises are well selected and appropriate, and many of them have implicit or explicit answers provided. Along with QM by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, I would rate this one of the best choices for the beginning student. While Cohen-Tannoudji is comprehensive and elegant, Griffiths is basic and focused.

This book does what it was designed to do - introduce the reader to quantum mechanics by connecting familiar newtonian mechanics to the strange world of the quantum. At 300 something pages it can't cover everything and smartly doesn't try. It gives lots of pointers to more advanced material and hints at features and concepts that are not covered.

It has 2 failings as a classroom text. The dearth of examples and the expectation that you will read through *Every* problem whether assigned or not. A motivated teacher can fix this by pointing out those keys concepts and formula that are buried in the problems. But not all teachers are caring or capable.

The book really falls down as a self-study text. There are no solutions to the problems so you have absolutely no feedback as to whether you are learning anything or not. The problems also take huge leaps from trivial to nearly impossible without help and the one,two or three stars are not a reliable guide.

My teacher tried to supplement the book with reading from Cohen-Tannoudji but that just lost us all in the notation, unfamiliar style and equations referenced from sections, which wouldn't happen if we actually used the entire book.

Griffiths writes well and nearly always explains what he choses to say clearly but doesn't always say enough even for a good student. He needs to add about 50 pages of worked examples and a partial answer to all the key problems. When my teacher gave partial answers the book was 200% more effective but he only did so 20% of the time (teachers are busy you know).

This book is a solid introduction to quantum mechanics, although Griffiths sometimes gets caught up in verbal and notational wizardry. The style is light and easy-going, unlike some earlier books on the subject. Griffiths also, not with unlimited success, attempts explain the physical intuition behind QM. However, a caveat to the reader: not all problems in the book are created equal. In my seminar-like class, some problems took five minutes to solve, while on others, the whole class spent a week on.

Perhaps people not expecting too much from an introductory text would be satisfied by the treatment of quantum mechanics in this book, but for those who want a no-holds-barred, give-it-all-to-me text that will inspire some thought should look elsewhere. The jokes and the glossing-over of some of the concepts in the book do not help the understanding of a complicated and non-intuitive subject. Another annoying habit of Griffiths is to provide examples as problems: "I'd love to work out an example for you ... Unfortunately, manageable cases are hard to come by, and I want to save the best example for you to work out yourself. Be sure, therefore, to study problem 2.22 with particular care." (pg. 46-47). I have used two other of his texts, including this one, and he is fairly consistent with his glib treatment of certain subjects.

As a text that will give the reader an extremely superficial knowledge of the workings of QM, knowledge of what calculations to perform when asked to find expectation values or angular momentum projections, this text may be adequate. That is NOT to say that those people who like this book are not intelligent; it gets people through. However, if you happen to be a person who likes to know what they're doing when they're performing a calculation, why they are doing it, what the physics underlying the calculations happen to be, and where the technique comes from, then I would suggest that if this text is required for the course you are taking, supplement it with Cohen-Tannoudji, Dirac, J.J. Sakurai, Bransden and Joachain, Messiah, and/or Merzbacher. Please try not to use it as the primary text for an introductory course on QM. You will miss out on the wonderful subleties and quirks of an essential part of any physicist's curriculum and find it harder to catch up on it later if you decide to pursue the subject further.

This is a good place to start studying QM after being introduced to some basic quantum physics from a modern physics text such as Serway or Eisberg and Resnick. I especially like the treatment of the uncertainty principle done in this text and many of the side comments made are very interesting. It is not perfect however, as there are no solutions to problems and some of the later chapters have errors. You can download an errata list at the author's web site though and many of the problems are the types that you can be fairly certain if you have the right answer or not. If you want to just read it and not work many problems it can get a little annoying because in deriving some results Griffiths will often say something like "and because of the theorem you proved in problem 2.4, we see that..." This book is also a bit overpriced in my mind, but so are almost all of the serious intro QM texts. I've seen other reviewers saying that Griffiths is not very rigorous and I believe that these reviewers must be either mathematicians or people who already knew the subject before reading the book. It is fine on the rigor for an intro text in my mind and since it is a standard QM text in many undergraduate physics programs it looks as though some people agree with me. In many ways I like Liboff better than this text, yet Griffiths is better than Liboff in many ways also. Two two texts complement each other yet put a dent in your wallet. If only Dover could get ahold of the two!

This is the best undergraduate quantum mechanics book I have ever read. Every undergraduate program should be using this book, the other books I've seen don't even come close. That includes Liboff, Goswami, and Greiner.I even think this book is worth a read after going through Cohen-Tannoudji. While the other books leave the student confused, with their heads spinning, Griffiths uses his excellent ability to explain things to provide as clear an introduction to the subject you could imagine. I disagree with the other reviewers, the notion that Davies book is better is absurd. As far as the problems with the examples, I think Griffiths approach is a good one.