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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truly wonderful adventure, January 22, 2001
This review is from: What Is Quantum Mechanics?: A Physics Adventure (Paperback)
This is a wonderful book. The evolution of quantum mechanics becomes a captivating adventure story about how scientists struggled to explain the puzzling result of experiments involving light and electrons in the first decades of the Twentieth Century. Reading this book you understand both the essentials of quantum mechanics and why its conclusions contradict our intuitive sense of how the world works. If you want to understand quantum mechanics starting with little or no knowledge this is the book for you. But even for those of you who are not dying to learn quantum mechanics, this still might be a book worth reading. More and more quantum mechanics does matter. Quantum mechanics provides not only an "explanation" of some of the most fundamental behavior in our world, but also is increasingly a part of our mythology (e.g. the uncertainty principle) and probably of future engineering (e.g. the quantum computer). As wonderful as this book is, I would make a few observations: 1. If you are really serious about understanding the underpinnings of quantum mechanics, or simply think this is the kind of thing you just won't get enough of, start first with the other book in this series, "Who is Fourier?" A fair amount of the mathematics in quantum mechanics relies on material covered in "Who is Fourier?" If you are going to get serious about this you might as well read the books in what would be a more satisfying order. 2. Be forewarned, the style of this book is not that of your typical scholarly book. This is not a weakness; in fact, it provides a warm charm, much the way the odd English in a Japanese video game does. The book is well translated from the original Japanese, but some of the unusual cultural differences remain. In several sections, there are perhaps a few too many references comparing learning science with learning another language. Fortunately, these sections can be easily skimmed. 3. One of the most fascinating results to come out of quantum mechanics is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. This book does a wonderful job laying the foundation for this principle. The book spends a lot of time going through Schrodinger's equations deriving the formulas for quantum mechanics from the assumption that the electron is a wave rather than a particle. This, along with Heisenberg's particle and matrix basis for determining quantum mechanics, provides the pivotal models for the uncertainty principle. Yet I found the treatment of the uncertainty principal itself disappointingly brief. 4. There seems to be a pro-Heisenberg bias to the book. The Heisenberg story is at the center of the book, and it is briefly noted that one of the senior teachers at the Japanese school where this book was written was an associate of Heisenberg's. I can't say for certain that this treatment is biased without knowing more of the history, but that is certainly the impression one gets. "What is Quantum Mechanics?" is organized into six chapters. The first chapter discusses the study of light and how the results of the "black box" experiment led Einstein to the conclusion that light could be described as a particle as well as a wave. The second chapter moves the discussion from the study of light to the study of electrons. Bohr's initial model of the atom with electron "circling" the nucleus is derived. The third chapter describes how Heisenberg "squeezed" the discrete behavior of the electron into the equations of motion from classical physics. The fourth chapter describes how Schrodinger took de Borglie's insight that the electron could also be described as a wave to derive the equations of quantum mechanics. The fifth chapter describes how Schroidinger ultimately failed to provide a visual image for the behavior of the electron. The sixth chapter brings us to where we are today with Bohr's probability view and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. All in all, this book is an absolute pleasure.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Pedagogic Book, November 26, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: What Is Quantum Mechanics?: A Physics Adventure (Paperback)
I do not think that this book deserves a negative review despite the silly humor or childish cartoons. This is neither a comic book nor is intended to be, but just in the process of learning of qunatum mechanics things such as these help to avoid the intimidation of reader and keep him sort of hanging around into learning this stuff. This is not meant for experts who may already have patterned a mind set on this subject. This is for a beginning reader who has some background in liberal arts physics and the like and who wishes to know what is really meant by quantum mechanics and why. Experts who might read this may find that the "holes" in their understanding is filled by reading the book--a fact that may make them depressed of the idea that they may have thought that they have understood quantum mechanics prior to reading this book. This book is simply unpretentious, historically structured and focuses on clarity as much as possible while trying to derive all steps in mathematical development--an important style of presentation necessary to enable a reader to stick to the book rather than a masterful book that author may likely to intimidate a reader while demonstrating his prowess in mathematics--I see this too common in books on quantum mechanics. Advanced QM books are often seem to be written to sort of "impress" members of the subject community that how the author has laboriously done a book masterfully or how deeply he has mastered the subject--This book is quite different from this style--It is quite readable, understandable and makes you to appreciate what teaching really is. I do not think there is any other quantum mechanics book that is as simple as this one and easy to understand in one reading, with some calculus background. This type of teaching sytle, from the roots and in a historical context is rarely employed today--I cannot think of any quantum mechanics book that builds every element of the concept from the roots like it is done in this book. When I look at text books, it is all to common to see concepts and facts presented as if they were "invented" in one fly but not developed as an evolutionary development where very bright people have contributed along the way. Although it may not be possible to present material in a historical context in every subject, this book does it admirably well in the important field of quantum mechanics--the characters including Wien, Max Planck, Bohr, Sommerfield, Born Heisenberg and Schrodinger are all part of this drama and their roles and contributions are well illustrated in cartoons, which I thought was nice. Besides, I do not think that this is entirely written by students--I think it has been greatly assisted by someone who has worked with Heisenberg (It is remarked somewhere in the text albeit indirectly). I thought the matrix mechanics, the way it is done in this book and in showing its correspondence to Schrodinger's equation is simply awesome ! I am Professor in an engineering department in a major university and I was thrilled to find that this book has employed approches that I have been using in my own classes--teaching style and methodololgy is an wonderful art--and it needs, first, I think, a sort of fanatic attitude toward simplicity and approach based on reverence to the subject--the reader may be blessed to discover some of it when you read this book. Hopefully you may discover the ultimate teacher! Richard Feynmann had once reportedly said to his collegue about his lectures in CalTech to freshmen, ".....I couldn't do it (a particular concept) well...not this way...I thought I can make a freshman understand this concept...I could not do it....that means I do not understand myself this concept very well...." The utter honesty of Feynmann is remarkable. Surely Feynmann would have passed a fair assessment of this book as this tries to capture some of his style in his famnous three-volume book on Feymann Lectures of Physics. I strongly it recommend to any beginner who is really interested in understanding quantum mechanics.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Excellent Book on Quantum Mechanics, October 26, 2001
This review is from: What Is Quantum Mechanics?: A Physics Adventure (Paperback)
First of all, this is not a serious textbook and is primarily intended for high school students or first- and second-year undergraduates who are interested in quantum mechanics. In fact, one of the reviewers of the original English script is a high school teacher (Dr. David Derbes. Luckily, he is my physics teacher : )). This book is divided chronologically into six chapters: "What is light"; "early quantum theory"; "the birth of quantum mechanics"; "wave mechanics"; "so long, matrix", and "departure to a new world". As many other readers have said, you will learn a great deal of history of modern physics in this 550-page book. You will find plenty of math in this book. Why? The writers of the book are very kind to include the derivations of important formulae. Unlike many other books just tell you the final results/equations, this book actually shows you where the results/equations come from. This is a tremendous help because after seeing the derivations it is much easier to remember and link what you have read into a whole piece, and not end up with a bunch of separate esoteric, elusive equations that lingering in your brain. There is, however, quite some math involved in this book. To read it comfortably, you need to get used to subscripts and superscripts. Math used in this book ranges from simple algebra to advanced calculus (such as Divergence and Laplacian). The good news is, virtually every derivation is shown step-by-step, and the authors try to show you all the required math and conclusion without going too deep into the exact meaning of those math, so it is quite possible to follow even without extensive knowledge in math. That being said, it is certainly helpful if you are good at math and know some of the more advanced math beyond high school level. (For those of you who don't want to go through all those math, I recommend Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. Although it doesn't contain as much information on quantum mechanics [since it is a book on superstring theory], the part on quantum mechanics is very clear, insightful, and very easy to read.) The only complain I have about this book is that sometimes ideas are not fully explained, in other words, the text tries to explain something to you, but you can't see how the explanation has anything to do with the question you have. An example: early in the book it talks about the idea of "degree of freedom". It says an object has three degrees of freedom, since it can move in three directions (up-down, left-right, forward-backward). Then it tries to convince you that a light wave has only two degrees of freedom. The explanation is that "potential and kinetic energy each has its own direction, which means that waves have two degrees of freedom." But every object can have potential and kinetic energy in two directions, why do they have three degrees of freedom? Ambiguity is the only reason that I give this book four stars instead of five. (I wanted to give it 4.5 stars.) (By the way, light wave indeed has two degrees of freedom, but the reason is something else.) Overall, this is an excellent book on quantum mechanics. This whole book is written in a relaxed style. You will see many funny cartoon faces in this book (which can really make you laugh at times). : )
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