Customer Reviews

Introductory Quantum Mechanics (4th Edition)

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

 

 

Places need improvement:

1. Time independent perturbation theory - The justifications for the derivation steps that lead to degenerate case are terrible. The place I learned degenerate perturbation method is from Fayer (Elements of Quantum mechanics).

2. Addition of angular momentum - For a beginner whom has never seen this done, just reading that section about addition of angular momentum, I don't believe one would walk away with anything but confusion. This section seriously needs some rewriting.

Highlights

1. Very complete! This means pretty much anything that one would encounter in undergrad quantum mechanics course is included here, in contrast to Griffith whom enjoys making you work through the exericses and have you arrive the results yourself. Having said that, this is a great book for reference.

2. For 3-D problems, there are many nice tables in the chapter that summarize all the important functions such as Neumann, Hankel, Legendre...etc. Furthermore, many commonly used spherical harmonics functions contained in a giant table is included. Once again, this makes it a great reference book as well.

3. Some harder exercises in the book contain answers or partial answers. The problems are not too hard which allows one to build confidence through solving theml

4. Includes a bonus chapter on quantum computing and a chapter on relativistic quantum mechanics which are both RARE things to be found in introductory textbooks.

5. One BIG chapter devoted to real-world applications...this is usually lacking in physics curriculum!!

Conclusion: As it is with any book out there, there are always good things and bad things about the book, however, there are significantly more good things I can say about this book than its shortcomings....Therefore, BUY this book to learn Quantum!

This book is incredibly comprehensive, but I wouldn't recommend it for the typical undergrad. In my experience with the book, I found it annoyingly elitist, like many physics texts. There are plenty of "...the rest is left as an exercise" and "the good student will notice..." comments scattered throughout the book. I would prefer a text with a focus that is not so narrowly centered on physics students. For those of you who are looking for a book on Quantum Mechanics to teach to a fair cross-section of undergraduates (i.e. chemistry students, mathemeticians, and engineers), don't get this book. For example, I was in the class with a friend of mine who is a mechanical engineer (and a good student), who wished to pursue graduate work in nuclear engineering. This book nearly scared him away. Griffiths writes a better text for those of us who can admit that we prefer background, examples, applications, and explicit derivation in a text.

Edit: 12/2004 - Again I find that with the passage of time wisdom and experience gives one perspective. Ironically, even though I was initially turned off by this book, I often use it as a reference. It is an excellent text to accompany both Griffiths' intro book and Merzbacher. Not a great text for a course, but then again.... what quantum text *is* a good book for a quantum course?

The first course in quantum mechanics that I took at Berkeley required only the Griffiths book. After realizing how terrible that book was, I picked up the Liboff book and was thoroughly satisfied. Although it is lacking in depth at some points, the subject matter is chosen very well and each section is reasonably self contained (as much as it can be in this subject). The mathematical level is just right for a second/third year physics major as it does a good job introducing new mathematics such as Airy functions, Legendre polynomials, spherical harmonics, and spherical Bessel and Neumann functions. It is also nice to see Liboff give a taste of more advanced topics such as path integration and relativistic quantum mechanics. The treatment of angular momenta and their addition (orbital and spin) is especially good for beginners. All undergraduates in physics would benefit from this text.

Liboff goes into much more detail in his explanations than do many other undergraduate texts on quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, it is often necessary to look at another book before you begin trying to decifer this one. In my undergraduate quantum course I often read Griffiths first to give me a basic idea of what it was I needed to understand, and then I would follow through with Liboff in order to actually understand it. This book was definitely helpful with a first course in Quantum Mechanics.

First a little about myself. I was a math major when I went to school thirty years ago. I took a few elementary physics courses back then but remember very little. I read most of Principles of QM by P.A.M. Dirac before I read this book. However I have not read any other texts and so I cannot do a good job of comparing this book to others. I have the second printing of the fourth edition. This printing has hundreds of typos. I sent a bunch of e-mails to Professor Liboff informing him of the ones that I found and he indicated to me that in subsequent printings these typos would be fixed.

I found that I was able to understand most of it without access to a teacher to help me. My complaint with Dirac is that although it explains theory quite well, it doesn't privide problem solving techniques. Liboff's book is quite good for that. As for theory, although Dirac is more thorough, there were important gaps in my understanding after reading Dirac that were cleared up by Liboff. Liboff is easier to understand.

In the fourth edition there is a new chapter on Quantum Computing. In my opinion, this chapter is extremely weak. Shor's algorithm for factoring integers is a probabilistic one, but this fact is not mentioned in the text. A probabilistic algorithm, simply stated, is one that does not always work. For instance Shor's algorithm fails to factor the number 9, but Liboff uses 9 as an example. In fact there is a definition of probabilistic algorithms in the book, but it fails to bring out the features that make Shor's alorithm understandable. Fortunately, this one bad chapter does not ruin the book.

Foremost I promise that my views won't be biased even though Professor Liboff's office is just next to mine. Apparently you can get a glimpse of the cover in the SpiderMan 2 movie for a fraction of a second.

I am an electrical engineering major and more into using quantum mechanics as a tool to solve problems. A preliminary course on quantum physics and mathematics will be useful to follow the book smoothly. Most of the explanations are well written, but again the depth varies depending on author's as well as reader's background (and is true for any scientific book).

The book develops most of the mathematical tools necessary for the book eg Bessel functions, spherical harmonics etc. My physics friend told me that relativistic quantum mechanics is also covered well (I never read this topic myself). Discussion about symmetry is also well presented.

Check out the book in library and get a feel for it before you buy. Not every book is for every one.

Liboff's quantum mechanics text is fairly complete, covering most of what should be covered in an undergraduate quantum mechanics course. That's about the only good thing I have to say about it. After two semesters of using this text in my undergraduate quantum course, I was happy to sell it back to my university's bookstore; it is the only textbook I have sold back so far.

While working problems from Liboff, I spent nearly as much time trying to decipher what Liboff was really asking me to do and correcting his typographical errors as I did actually working problems. To be fair to Professor Liboff, these problems with his book may be due to poor copy editing rather than to poor writing, but the point is the errors are still there. Nothing justifies spending multiple hours slaving over a single problem only to discover that the source of the difficulty is a typo in the book, rather than your own error.

I was also very frustrated at the organization of the text. For example, the material on angular momentum, rather than being presented together is a unit, is scattered amongst several chapters. Liboff is also fond of referring the reader to previous sections of the text. While there is nothing really wrong with this in itself, I found it grew tiresome rapidly to flip back hundreds of pages for a single equation that could easily have been reproduced. This is especially frustrating when Liboff refers to several equations from various previous sections in quick succession, a procedure necessitated by his peculiar organization of the material.

On the whole, Liboff's text confused me more than it clarified anything. I was fortunate to have a good professor for the course, and good lecture notes to draw from. Had I been relying on Liboff's book for my understanding, I would have understood nothing. I'm going to purchase Griffiths' book and see if it will help fill the gaps in my understanding that Liboff's left.

Unless you're looking to go straight to field theory or some other "pure" form of quantum, this is probably one of the best books you can pick up, particularly for people who are actually going to use quantum mechanics to calculate real things (solids, atoms, molecules, etc.). This is not to say that it's in any way an applied book, it is certainly appropriate for an undergrad physics class. Doesn't baby you like Griffiths but still spells things out for you without being coy or requiring you to make many intuitive leaps on your own the way Sakurai etc. do. I find that physical chemist friends of mine particularly appreciate this book, as well as several engineers I know.

This is definitely the most comprehensive QM textbook out there. That said, I disagree with the majority of the reviews that claim this is a good text to learn QM from in an independent study environment. If you want to learn QM on your own, I recommend Griffiths. The layout of that text is more logical and the reader isn't constantly told to refer to equations in chapter 3 when he/she is on chapter 7.

For any graduate level engineer or physicist, this text is a must have. I constantly refer to this book when I'm stuck on a problem, or when I need to refresh my memory in general. If you're an undergraduate or high schooler who wants to learn QM in their spare time, I'd get Griffiths and Shankar, the standard QM texts for undergraduate courses in the subject.

I agree with the reader from Berkeley. I also took a year long sequence (at Illinois) that only required the Griffiths book. Although enjoyable to read, Griffith's books always seem to lack details necessary to the serious student.

Liboff's book is comprehensive and well-written.