4.0
Quantum Mechanics
ByPublisher Description
From the bestselling author of The Theoretical Minimum, a DIY introduction to the math and science of quantum mechanics.
First he taught you classical mechanics. Now, physicist Leonard Susskind has teamed up with data engineer Art Friedman to present the theory and associated mathematics of the strange world of quantum mechanics.
In this follow-up to the New York Times best-selling The Theoretical Minimum, Susskind and Friedman provide a lively introduction to this famously difficult field, which attempts to understand the behavior of sub-atomic objects through mathematical abstractions. Unlike other popularizations that shy away from quantum mechanics' weirdness, Quantum Mechanics embraces the utter strangeness of quantum logic. The authors offer crystal-clear explanations of the principles of quantum states, uncertainty and time dependence, entanglement, and particle and wave states, among other topics, and each chapter includes exercises to ensure mastery of each area. Like The Theoretical Minimum, this volume runs parallel to Susskind's eponymous Stanford University-hosted continuing education course.
An approachable yet rigorous introduction to a famously difficult topic, Quantum Mechanics provides a tool kit for amateur scientists to learn physics at their own pace.
First he taught you classical mechanics. Now, physicist Leonard Susskind has teamed up with data engineer Art Friedman to present the theory and associated mathematics of the strange world of quantum mechanics.
In this follow-up to the New York Times best-selling The Theoretical Minimum, Susskind and Friedman provide a lively introduction to this famously difficult field, which attempts to understand the behavior of sub-atomic objects through mathematical abstractions. Unlike other popularizations that shy away from quantum mechanics' weirdness, Quantum Mechanics embraces the utter strangeness of quantum logic. The authors offer crystal-clear explanations of the principles of quantum states, uncertainty and time dependence, entanglement, and particle and wave states, among other topics, and each chapter includes exercises to ensure mastery of each area. Like The Theoretical Minimum, this volume runs parallel to Susskind's eponymous Stanford University-hosted continuing education course.
An approachable yet rigorous introduction to a famously difficult topic, Quantum Mechanics provides a tool kit for amateur scientists to learn physics at their own pace.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesQuantum Mechanics Reviews
4.0
“The Theoretical Minimum made me reflect upon my time as a student at the University of Glasgow. My mornings were spent in the Joseph Black Building, a Georgian fortress of red brick and di-mono-fluorine (DMF according to the great Dr Allan, purveyor of deep eutectics). There, the chemistry lecturers served us a "word salad" of de Broglie waves and Schrödinger’s equations. We spoke of the universe as a hazy, probabilistic soup. The maths felt like a secondary "tool", a foot note if you will. It was all "physical intuition": vague, descriptive, and frustratingly disconnected from the rigour I knew existed.
After Chemistry, I ventured via the Boyd Orr to the Maths and Stats building, Tesco meal deal in hand. It was a 1970s, asbestos-laden, brutalist concrete box that felt more like a condemned car park than a temple of logic. Sitting directly across from the pool tables and parlors of the QMU, it was a place of sensory deprivation. The windows were thin, the air was stale, and the atmosphere was one of utilitarian misery. There, in a room that smelled of damp and BO, we weren't talking about atoms; we were talking about the abstract beauty of linear algebra.
In that maths class sat the Other Matthew, a slightly shabby Justin Bieber lookalike from Cumbernauld. He was a mathematical savant. While I was struggling to visualise what a linear transformation even was, he was flying through proofs. But there was a quirk. For all his brilliance, Other Matthew had a linguistic "glitch" that drove myself and our pedantic colleague, Christopher, mad. He would constantly refer to "this matrice" and "those matrixes." We would wince:"It’s matrices, Matthew, my brother in Christ." But it didn't matter. To Other Matthew, the objects were just symbols to be manipulated. He had the "how" mastered, but even he lacked the "why."
To him, a matrix was a grid of numbers in a workbook; to the Chemistry lecturers, the statistical nature of the universe was a spiel to be given. The tragedy was that no one ever told us that Matthew’s "matrixes" were the exact same thing as my "word salad" orbitals and particles.
Picking up Leonard Susskind’s The Theoretical Minimum ten years later felt like a long overdue recalibration. In a few chapters, the wall between the buildings crumbled. I realised that the Matrix (the "Matrice") isn't just a grid of numbers; it is the Observable. It represents the physical act of the experiment itself. When you "apply" a matrix to a system, you are acting on a state and producing a readable output. The book is a masterclass in 'horizontal' education, seeing beyond your own knowledge silo.
The beauty of the connection lies in three identities that my Glasgow degree kept separate:
1. The State (the bra- and -ket vectors): This is the Eigenvector. In maths, it’s just a direction that doesn't change when the matrix acts on it. In the universe, it is the particle's condition.
2. The Measurement (A): This is the Matrix, the operator, the mathematical object that encodes what the physical act of the experiment can possibly return.
3. The Output (lambda): This is the Eigenvalue. This is the only thing the scientist actually sees on the screen.
When Other Matthew was solving for lambda, he wasn't just doing "matrixes", he was calculating the only possible quantum realities the universe is allowed to reveal to us.
In reflection, my time at Glasgow was a collection of "little snippets." I was taught to be a chemist in one building and a mathematician in another, but the dots were never joined in a satisfactory and complete way. By splitting knowledge into compartments or silos, we lose the true narrative of the universe. We trade the grand, cohesive story of reality for a series of disconnected footnotes.
If I could go back to the computer lab in the Boyd Orr building, I’d tell Other Matthew to keep his "matrixes." I’d tell him that those numbers he’s crunching are the literal teeth of the gears that turn the world. We weren't just students in different classes; we were two Zarathustras looking down from the same mountain from different corries and congratulating ourselves for our "insight", never realising we shared a potential summit.”
“Bra lösning för någon intresserad av kvantmekanik, men ingen eller lite förkunskaper. Dock bra om du har goda kunskaper inom linjär algebra/variabelanalys.”
About Leonard Susskind
Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor in Theoretical Physics at Stanford University. He is the author of Quantum Mechanics (with Art Friedman) and The Theoretical Minimum (with George Hrabovsky), among other books. He lives in Palo Alto, California.
Art Friedman is a data consultant who previously spent fifteen years at Hewlett-Packard as a software engineer. A lifelong student of physics, he lives in Mountain View, California.
Art Friedman is a data consultant who previously spent fifteen years at Hewlett-Packard as a software engineer. A lifelong student of physics, he lives in Mountain View, California.
Other books by Leonard Susskind
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