Customer Reviews

Schaum's Outline of Quantum Mechanics (Schaum's)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

At a first glance it looks very well, especially for the richness of exercises. However my students have already found 2 mistakes (not merely misprints):

Ex. 4.28 is completely fool: a constant of motion (momentum of a free particle) seems to evolve in time because of forgetting an 'i' in the energy exponent!

the answer d) of 5.15 is simply wrong.

I am not able to give a rate to the book because I have not yet read it carefully; I put 3 stars because it is compulsory to fill the field. I am writing this note just to give a warning to students: never trust books blindly, even the best ones can be plagued by mistakes.

I would have preferred to make these remarks directly to the authors but I do not know their e-mail address; my suggestion is to put a link to the authors.

This refers to the 'Low on Solved Problems Review'
I cannot think of a more inaccurate thing to say, even if you didn't like the book. The whole book is *full* of solved problems, that's the whole point. My main critique is that there are too many errors but most of them aren't hard to spot. Anyone studying quantum should get this book and use the solved problems to help you understand how to solve those tricky quantum questions (just beware of errors and you should be ok).
Make sure you also pick up the 'Problems and Solutions on Quantum Mechanics' from Y-K Lim et al at the University of Science and Technology in China.

The problems are advanced. Does not cover density matrix, time reversal symmetry, and wigner-eckart theorem. Prior familiarity with quantum mechanics is helpful. Detailed solutions are provided. The book accomplishes its purpose: provide detailed solutions to benchmark questions in quantum mechanics. The book is very helpful. I recommend with high regard.

Certainly the Schaum's Outline series has served generations of students admirably. In particular, I see the Quantum Mechanics volume as an invaluable tool for "brushing up". However there is a large market segment that would benefit from a shorter and simpler tutorial and the publisher has recognized that by printing Quantum Mechanics Demystified. This book is great for an initial introduction to the topic or as a review for subsequent classes on the subject. The Demystified book is much more tightly focused and relies upon reinforcement of central concepts. The Schaum's outline has far more problems and many more topics; it trades depth for breadth. It is a volume that has something for everyone. The Demystified book is superb because it collects the fundamental concepts and solidifies them. It has the basics that everyone needs in order to understand quantum mechanics.

This book is useful. There is a variety of problems from fairly easy to difficult, but in general, the problems are similar (and often the same) as problems in graduate texts such as Merzbacher, Cohen, etc.. My complaint with this book is not necessarily the typos (although they should be fixed given the popularity of this book). My complaint is that that the authors sometimes skip steps in the solutions that are so critical, that is is nearly impossible to understand them. A useful solution can leave out mathematical drudgery, and calculations, but it shouldn't leave out critical steps that have been covered earlier in the book, because a solutions manual like this is not usually used as a textbook, it is used as a reference.

For instance I may want to try a practice problem on the Variational Method, and the problem leaves out steps that may have been covered in earlier chapters. So I spend hours playing with the problem until I find the solution. This is not useful, and not what a problems and solutions book should do. I understand that not every step can be included, but I would rather see more complete solutions, which might sacrifice the unsolved problems and the blank pages at the end of the book.

This book seems to have been typewritten from the authors' handwritten notes, because many of the typos are consistent with penmanship. But one of the authors should go over all of the solutions, flesh out the missing steps, and correct the errors. Without doing this, the physics student can't rely on this book as a trusted source, since they never know if the error they encounter is a typo or their own mistake.

Regardless, this is a useful book, and I have learned a lot from it.

This is a good repository of standard undergraduate QM textbook problems and worked solutions. Worth it's price as something to add to your arsenal of solution manuals to get you out of jams when you get stuck.

If you are unclear on QM principles and need more than practice problem solving, you would be better off looking at a concise text like Griffiths undergrad-level QM book.

The gold mine in this book is the problems. There's a lot of them solved. Though most don't appear in graduate courses, the idea behind solving certain problems is there.

There are some mistakes in the solutions. I would be weary of getting worked up if the final answer in the book is different from yours. Just follow the step by using mathematical rules, and you'll find the mistakes.

A must for any physics student. I don't find any other books that have such detailed solutions.

This book is a complete introductory course that presents the basic concepts of Quantum Mechanics.

As a newcomer to this subject, I was puzzled by the separate definitions of the similar notions of inner product (denoted < , >), scalar product (denoted ( , )), scalar product (denoted < | >) and Dirac bracket (also denoted < | >). It would be most helpful if, in a future edition, the authors could define these four notions in one place, along with an explanation of the differences (if any) between them.

Apart from this minor annoyance, for which I deducted one star, this book succesfully tackles a most important and difficult subject. The writing and presentation are up to the usually high standards of Schaum's Outline series. There are plenty of exercises, both solved and unsolved. And it's excellent value for money. For the price, there's no serious competition.

A better mathematical treatment, based on linear vector spaces, may be found in "Principles of Quantum Mechanics" by Shankar.

Did not contain enough exhaustive solutions to really help those who need to get over the "math hump". The text runs together and subject areas are not clearly seperated. It's like an abridged textbook. I expected more math help and less theory help. If your looking for a suplement to QM classes as an undergrad the Dover books are better at doing the math. The Schaum editors left their forte behind with this one.
Update 11/03 - Half-way through second quarter in undergrad QM...still no help from this text. It attempts to be another textbook when it should double the solved problems both basic and complex. Problems should be solved from several angles and at various levels of approach.
Update 12/06 - Finished my first qm grad class...still no gold stars.

I bought this book as I was taking undergraduate-level Quantum Mechanics. While it has a better review and analysis of bra and ket notation than, say, the Griffiths text, and has excellent applications (square well, energy levels, Landau Levels, etc.), it was practically useless until I finished the course. Additionally, as others have pointed out, the outline is riddled with errors. It is not as well-written as Murray Spiegel's Vector Analysis or Fourier Series books. If you're a graduate student or want a refresher course, I'd consider it. Otherwise, this is not the ideal choice.