The Best and Easiest Reading on Quantum Physics?

[Ikarus]

Ok, I guess we all have to wait to see which one is the case. Stay tuned to the news!.

But I'm sure that even when it's in the news, some people will just stay in denial about it .

Found it!

Breakthrough in science as new theorem is revealed: The law of difficulty

This weekend's conference, featuring symposia on how hard the Earth sciences are, how confusing medical science is, and how ridiculously un-gettable quantum physics is, represented a major step forward for the science-is-hard theorem.

(snip)

"To be a scientist, you have to learn all this weird stuff, like how many molecules are in a proton," University of Chicago physicist Dr. Erno Heidegger said. "While it is true that I have become an acclaimed physicist and reaped great rewards from my career, one must not lose sight of the fact that these blessings came only after studying all of this completely impossible, egghead stuff for years."

(snip)

"Quantum physics has always been a particularly tough branch of science," UCLA physicist Dr. Hideki Watanabe said. "But in addition to being some of the smartest Einstein-y stuff around, it is undeniably a really stupid, pointless thing to study, something you could never actually use in the real world. This paradoxical dual state may one day lead to a new understanding of physics as a way to confuse and bore people."

 

[reason1]

Well that's the thing about science.

If it's demonstrated you can't really actually stay in denial about it.

No!, not according to the definition :

Denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence. [1] The subject may deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether (simple denial), admit the fact but deny its seriousness (minimisation) or admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility (transference).

Think how easy it should be for you to prove me wrong.

Yeah, it's very easy to prove you wrong (and I did it), but it's very hard to make you admit that :

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

So what are you saying is the mathematical model?

What mathematical model are you referring to?

Which "mathematics model" in QM?

Again I don't know what you are referring to.

Why would you refer to a mathematical model when talking about a thought experiment not described by a mathematical model.

I must say that I'm impressed with your denial techniques .

 

[Hamradioguy]

Lengthy discussion, awesome, yet.. it's still too technical and hard for me to digest anything. And I haven't been able to find what I need too in the internet. Uh..

You might try "Mr. Tompkins In Wonderland" (and a couple of related books) by George Gamow. Someone gave me this delightful book back when I was a kid. Like you, Mr. Tompkins wants to know all about quantum mechanics. So he signs up for a series of lectures by a physics professor at a nearby college. But the lectures, and the math, are way over his head. However, after each lecture he has a dream in which the world becomes VERY strange- the Universe is 10 miles across, or the speed of light is just thirty miles per hour. Fortunately, the professor shows up in the dream and explains everything in simpler terms. There are neat illustrations and the complete lectures by the professor are at the back of the book for those not mathematically challenged.

 

[SusanB-M1]

No, it's not a joke, it's an experiment that I'm going to do, which if succeeded, it will clear Einstein's name :

Thank you for reply. I clicked on the 'I agree' button, and a space came up but stayed blank. I'll try again later.

 

[dlorde]

"Grains of Mystique: Quantum Physics for the Layman"
This one started off well and held my attention. It is written quite pleasantly, in principle, but then they start leaving stuff out and it seems they forgot complete passages at the end. Left me very unsatisfied and brainached.

They also seem to confuse measurement disturbance and the Uncertainty Principle.

 

[reason1]

Thank you for reply. I clicked on the 'I agree' button, and a space came up but stayed blank. I'll try again later.

You're welcome. It's working, try again but wait a little for the video to load.

 

[Ashles]

No!, not according to the definition :

Uh yes, that's kind of the point.

We already know what denial is (that's why I referred to it).
The point is that you are going to look very unconvincing remaining in denail in the face of facts.

I guess that was another point that passed you by.

Yeah, it's very easy to prove you wrong (and I did it),

Oh dear, you really are laughable now.
Please link to the post(s) where you did so.

Oh you can't? Well we'll put this down to yet more baseless claims by you.

At this point you are barely above sticking your tongue out and going 'Nyer nyer nyer nyer nyer'.

but it's very hard to make you admit that :

So when I asked you to link to where you had caused 'scientists to be on the defensive' you linked to a post that showed multiple instances you refusing to answer questions.

And when I describe you as not really having any evidence to back up your claims of super amazing new QM theories, you link to posts where, I also accuse you of exactly the same thing.

You aren't very good at this 'discussion' thing are you.

I must say that I'm impressed with your denial techniques .

I'm impressed with your desire to link to every post where you refuse to give evidence as... evidence of how you are demonstrating your claims.

That's not denial, that's basically arguing like an 8 year old.

So I guess I'll just assume you are making stuff up until it is demonstrated otherwise.

Default position has not altered.

 

[AndyD]

I looked at the following pages a couple of months back and found them useful. The fact that I was left still wondering what QM is apparently means that I understood it pretty well In fact, if I was any more confused I'd be an expert...

Introduction to Quantum Mechanics

Infophilia: Quantum Mechanics for dummies Part 2

For an even simpler introduction, read anything on the "Law of Attraction" (no, seriously, don't).

 

[Tim Thompson]

Real Physics

The uncertainty principle in quantum physics (usually associated with Heisenberg) is a fundamental limitation of nature and has nothing at all to do with our ability to make measurements of limited precision. Indeed, the principle can be derived entirely from pure mathematics, with no input from physics at all

Uh, no, it can't. That's an absurd statement.

It most certainly can, but you cut the quite right where I provide you with two derivations of same which do not appeal to physics ...

(i.e., Fourier Transforms and Uncertainty, The Mathematical Uncertainty Principle).

And if they are not good enough for you, then look in a physics book: Introduction to Quantum Theory by David Park. I used the 1st & 2nd editions (McGraw-Hill) as both and undergrad & grad student. The 3rd edition (1992) is still in press as a Dover reprint. In that 3rd edition see section 3.5, "Indeterminacy Relations" (pp. 75-80), and the summary item 7 on page 93. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a physical manifestation of a purely mathematical relationship involving noncommuting Hermitian operators. You can't get away with pretending that the derivations don't exist.

Despite the fact that mathematics is an invention of the human mind, it appears nevertheless that the universe around us obeys the principles of mathematics at a very deep and fundamental level (i.e., Tegmark, 2008; follow the arXiv link to a PDF of the original).

And you said ...

First of all, mathematics is not a form of physics. Mathematics has no power to say anything at all about the universe.

Now that is absurd. The reason that we can write physics in the language of mathematics is precisely because the universe is mathematical in the first place. The physical uncertainty principles we use are only special case applications of a more fundamental mathematical property of the universe. The fact that the physical universe obeys mathematical principles, rather then the other way around, is profound and deeply important.

Chaos Theory in classical mechanics is a physical manifestation of the mathematical property of instability in non-linear differential equations that was discovered by Henri Poincare back in the early 1900's, long before anyone observed the physical "chaos". You are far too naive in your approach to physics, and you simply ignore anything that fails the test of your preconceptions; you ignored the mathematical derivations of uncertainty principles, just as you ignored Tegmark's paper and the references therein. You really need to leave the superficial approach behind and try to learn real physics.

 

[leafman91]

Scientific Terminology

Now I posted something similar to that a while back and got corrected on it by another poster here who several others appeared to agree with.

He stated that in theory those subatomic effects (indeterminacy etc.) could be scaled up so you could in fact have a real superpositioned cat (if you had some pretty specific circumstances).

I asked if in theory a cat could be fired through a macroscopic version of the double-slit experiment and yield the same results as the subatomic results and he said yes.

So that pretty much confused me about the micro/macro scaling issues.

He may have been using the term cat a different way. I believe a 'cat' can also refer to a physical demonstration of indeterminacy (named after Schrodinger's Cat') e.g within an experiment. It's slang, really.

 

[leafman91]

Wow, this is annoying. I've just discovered the comment I replied to was posted 2 pages ago. To be quite honest, I have heard of University professors on the subject that still don't entirely get Quantum Mechanics.I would be very surprised if someone has come along and made QM seem easy.

 

[Ashles]

He may have been using the term cat a different way. I believe a 'cat' can also refer to a physical demonstration of indeterminacy (named after Schrodinger's Cat') e.g within an experiment. It's slang, really.

No. I specifically referred to an actual, everyday cat.

 

[leafman91]

No. I specifically referred to an actual, everyday cat.

I didn't mean you, I meant the person you quoted in the post. I could tell you were talking about average, everyday cats.