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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010372433 | QC174.12 B34 2020 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
Quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful scientific theory. But it is also completely mad. Although the theory quite obviously works, it leaves us chasing ghosts and phantoms; particles that are waves and waves that are particles; cats that are at once both alive and dead; lots of seemingly spooky goings-on; and a desperate desire to lie down quietly in a darkened room. The Quantum Cookbook explains why this is. It provides a unique bridge between popular exposition and formal textbook presentation, written for curious readers with some background in physics and sufficient mathematical capability. It aims not to teach readers how to do quantum mechanics but rather helps them to understand how to think about quantum mechanics. Each derivation is presented as a "recipe" with listed ingredients, including standard results from the mathematician's toolkit, set out in a series of easy-to-follow steps. The recipes have been written sympathetically, for readers who - like the author - will often struggle to follow the logic of a derivation which misses out steps that are "obvious", or which use techniques that readers are assumed to know.
Author Notes
Jim Baggott is an award-winning freelance science writer.
Table of Contents
| About the Author | p. xiii |
| Prologue: What's Wrong with This Picture? | p. 1 |
| The Description of Nature at the End of the Nineteenth Century | |
| 1 Planck's Derivation of E = hv | p. 19 |
| The Quantization of Energy | |
| 2 Einstein's Derivation of E = mc 2 | p. 35 |
| The Equivalence of Mass and Energy | |
| 3 Bohr's Derivation of the Rydberg Formula | p. 55 |
| Quantum Numbers and Quantum Jumps | |
| 4 De Broglie's Derivation of ¿ - h/p | p. 73 |
| Wave-Particle Duality | |
| 5 Schrodinger's Derivation of the Wave Equation | p. 89 |
| Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem | |
| 6 Born's Interpretation of the Wavefunction | p. 111 |
| Quantum Probability | |
| 7 Heisenberg, Bohr, Robertson, and the Uncertainty Principle | p. 133 |
| The Interpretation of Quantum Uncertainty | |
| 8 Heisenberg's Derivation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle | p. 157 |
| The Stability of Matter and the Periodic Table | |
| 9 Dirac's Derivation of the Relativistic Wave Equation | p. 179 |
| Electron Spin and Antimatter | |
| 10 Dirac, Von Neumann, and the Derivation of the Quantum Formalism | p. 203 |
| State Vectors in Hilbert Space | |
| 11 Von Neumann and the Problem of Quantum Measurement | p. 219 |
| The 'Collapse of the Wavefunction' | |
| 12 Einstein, Bohm, Bell, and the Derivation of Bell's Inequality | p. 243 |
| Entanglement and Quantum Non-locality | |
| Epilogue: A Game of Theories | p. 265 |
| The Quantum Representation of Reality | |
| Appendix 1 Cavity Modes | p. 269 |
| Appendix 2 Lorentz Transformation for Energy and Linear Momentum | p. 272 |
| Appendix 3 Energy Levels of the Hydrogen Atom | p. 275 |
| Appendix 4 Orthogonality of the Hydrogen Atom Wavefunctions | p. 278 |
| Appendix 5 The Integral Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality | p. 280 |
| Appendix 6 Orbital Angular Momentum in Quantum Mechanics | p. 282 |
| Appendix 7 A Very Brief Introduction to Matrices | p. 288 |
| Appendix 8 A Simple Local Hidden Variables Theory | p. 291 |
| Index | p. 295 |
