Customer Reviews

The Picture Book of Quantum Mechanics

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This book is totally excellent. This book sheds much light on quantum mechanics with its excellent graphical representations of the functions involved. The CD-ROM is also great. The companion book which introduces the computer software usd to generate many of these graphics is also great and brings a physics lab into your own room (well as far as is possible)! These books make the reader feel like a physicist rather than a recipient of some authour's bruised ego as the authour tries to confuse the reader by demonstrating 'mathematical prowess' by making their subject dull and unintelligible. This book is beautiful and inspiring and a must for anyone interested in quantum mechanics. The text contains a lot of detail, but the accompanying images make even the harder parts a joy to read. Since reading this book I have decided that a proper physics book is not simply a half-explained mathematical proof splattered on paper with accompanying problems that try to out-smart competing authours, but a good physics book is, like this one, about physics! Physics can be a very visual subject, so let's make it so! If more books were as well thought out as this one then we would have more first-class physicists!

This book on its own is not enough to understand the mathematics and physics that is required for an introductory course in quantum theory and quantum mechanics as a whole. It is an amazing supplement to any other material you might use to understand some sort of a physical representation to the nature of some of the phenomena associated.

The visualizations and graphs shed some much needed light on many topics, especially if you are doing this exploration on your own.

Don't expect the mathematics to be easy, and definitely don't expect everything in the book to be clear from the first instance but the visualizations truly give you a clearer picture of what is discussed. (something to imagine as you flip the equations around your head).

I personally jump from one material to another and return to the picture book to help me sink in the maths and the mind twisting revelations of QM.

Excellent addition to any serious library about quantum mechanics. Just wish it can be expanded with an excellent introduction and discussion like in Principles of Quantum Mechanics by R. Shankar.