Customer Reviews

Quantum Mechanics (Physics and Its Applications)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the best QM I have. I would recommend it to any undergraduate student studying this subject. The book is very small and pleasant to read. It's great to use as a complement to a more comercial book like Gasiorowicz's one which I also recommend. It's the most compact book on the subject and the author looses no time with numerical examples. A must have.

I have used this textbook at a for upper-division undergraduate quantum mechanics for 2 years.

This book covers the basics and discusses more physics than mathematical tricks. At approximately 100 pages, it still provides excellent discussions on scattering, perturbation theory and symmetry. I would hope that such a text as this one marks the beginning of a shift in physics textbooks - from the overly verbose with reams of algebra and calculus to the essentials - to one which concentraits on physics.

I reviewed the manuscript for the first edition of Davies's book for Routledge & Kegan Paul and recommended it fairly enthusiastically. The book was limited, but what it did it did relatively well. It was brief but clear, well-written, did not introduce too much of the usual mythology in discussing 'wave-particle duality' (I liked the discussion of the two-slit experiment), and went on to present the introductory ideas and mathematics of quantum mechanics in an attractive way. I used it in the spring of 1998 to prepare several lectures for my junior-level modern physics class, and recommended that my students read sections of it.

I can not recommend this new edition. At $42.95 the cost is probably about four times that of the original edition. For a book of this size and limitation, a bargain at $10, $40 is ridiculously overpriced. At $42.95 there are too many attractive alternatives.

Davies & Betts are to be congratulated on their delightfully concise writing style & wide coverage of all the essentials of Quantum Mechanics, at the advanced undergraduate level. Well done gentlemen!

The one weakness in this book is that it indulges in equations. There are lots and lots of equations in this book. However, in order to organize the material of quantum mechanics in such a terse way, within 192 pages, requires that one substitute equations for discussion. For those who have not had the opportunity to pursue discussion of the why and wherefores of these equations, happily, there is an excellent resource available.

The Transnational College of Lex, of Japan, has an excellent book entitled "What is Quantum Mechanics? A Physics Adventure" which provides the whys and wherefores of these equations. This book is intelligible for anyone without any mathematics or physics background. And it is an excellent supplement to Davies' great book. Although both books belong to different authorship, they were made for each other. I personally did not appreciate Davies' book until I read the aforementioned Japanese book. The mathematics isn't hard. You simply need to be initiated into the hidden tricks and conventions the mathematics community guards the way the fraternity of magicians guard their tricks. There is an excellent analogue between mathematics and magic tricks. Once a trick is explained, its simplicity and trivial nature dawns on you. Similarly, if mathematicians would condescend to the unitiated, and abandon the childish mentality of the fraternal caste, it would be a charming departure from convention to communicate with nonmathematicians. The paucity of solutions in books that provide "answers to selected exercises" does not serve an educational motive, but has an obvious ulterior motive. The Japanese disregard the snobbery and unload all the details. I think that explains their advance beyond Western technological education. Western European culture is degenerating in its educational methods because of the status its Ivy League colleges place on education. "Titles," not "content" seems to be the only significance for obtaining an education today.

To sum up, Paul Davies' book should not be read so much for its lucidity (which it is in parts) but for the aesthetic way in which he organized the material of quantum mechanics and the value this has for posterity.