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Title: The New Quantum Universe by Tony Hey, Patrick Walters ISBN: 0-521-56457-3 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 23 October, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The New Quantum Universe
Comment: The Quantum Universe was very good. The New Quantum Universe is excellent. Its authors write with a clarity and dash rarely achieved for what can be (and is) a daunting subject.
Rating: 5
Summary: Quantum effects are all around us
Comment: When you think about quantum physics, you may be inclined to think small. Many people naturally think that quantum effects happen only on a scale that, for most of us, isn't relevant. Hey and Walters, though, help us think again. Quantum effects are in the world all around us. Indeed, the universe would be very different if the rules of quantum mechanics were not what they are.
The stated purpose of this book is to "present the essential ideas of quantum physics as simply as possible and demonstrate how quantum physics affects us all." After reading the book, I have to agree that Hey and Walters have succeeded on both accounts. They've achieved their goal by laying the book out in a careful and logical manner, including filling it with lots of informative and nicely made illustrates (on average, more than one for each page).
The book begins by discussing the classical differences between waves and particles. Most of us have been introduced to quantum mechanics this way. First learning how quantum-mechanical objects act like "particles" some of the time, and "waves" part of the time. An important point made by the authors is that particles and waves are idealizations. In reality, quantum-mechanical objects cannot be described by any simple picture. Overcoming this conceptual obstacle is one of the first challenges for someone who is first becoming acquainted with QM. This is a point made by their careful discussion about the results and implications of double-slit experiments.
This book has equations. Not many, and not too difficult (mostly just algebra). It's really written at a High School or Freshman College level. The ideas introduced are mostly qualitative. I think this makes the book an excellent introduction. I certainly wish I'd had something like this before taking my first QM class. Having a qualitative and conceptual understanding before diving into the mathematics is a more productive approach.
Leaving the chapter on waves and uncertainty, the authors introduce the reader to the weird world of the uncertainty principle, which is the strange characteristic of quantum-mechanical objects that they don't actually have an exact position/velocity until it's measured. There's an excellent series of photographs that illustrate the uncertainty principle in a macroscopic object by using a sequence showing the probabilistic formation of a camera image over time. The book quotes often from Richard Feynman, and this chapter has an introductory description of Feynman's diagrams/quantum paths.
These discussions lead naturally to the Schrodinger equation and matter probability waves. Again, there's a little mathematics here (the differential equation for a particle moving in one dimension, in a potential). The authors illustrate the tie-in with the macroscopic world by illustrating a photograph of some dust mites, made by using the quantum-mechanical nature of electrons.
Chapter 4 is one of the best, in my opinion. It's about the structure of atoms. When this subject was first introduced to me over 35 years ago, the explanation faltered and it took several more years before I felt comfortable in my understanding. How I wish I'd had this book then. The explanation here is crisp and clear, and does a nice job of explaining the notation used for the different quantum-energy levels and how they relate to things like the angular momentum.
How atoms are made affects our everyday lives. The fact that bosons and fermions have different statistical distributions makes a huge difference in how macroscopic objects behave. In fact, we would probably not be alive to notice how different the universe would be without these specific characteristics at the quantum level. One of the best examples is found in the life sequence of stars, where the quantum-mechanical structure of stars is inherently related to their evolution. There's an excellent chapter in this book that describes how stars work, how they are born, what makes them shine, and how they die. In each step, the laws of quantum mechanics govern the evolutionary process.
Other topics covered include superconductivity, superfluidity, Feynman diagrams, Hawking radiation and black holes, the weak and strong forces, the Higgs vacuum, particle accelerators, lasers, monopoles, and quark confinement. The book also has several informative appendixes in the back, that supply additional mathematical information, including a simple solution to the Schrodinger equation.
This book is a little like Chandrasekhar's book "Why Things Are the Way They Are," with a touch of the flavor found in Sam Trieman's book "The Odd Quantum." Both of these other books are among my favorite introductory texts, and "The Quantum Universe" sits on my bookshelf next to them.
This is a well-written book that makes an excellent introduction for students, and enjoyable leisure reading by scientists and engineers who've already had a college class in quantum mechanics. The illustrations and photographs add to the expressive and clear writing style to make this a book I can heartily recommend
Rating: 5
Summary: an extremely good book about modern physics
Comment: this is an excellent book, from the beginning to the end. it introduces all the modern physics concepts with very clean explanations and beautiful colorful pictures. i just love it.
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Title: Einstein's Mirror by Tony Hey, Patrick Walters ISBN: 0521435323 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 31 July, 1997 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Fabric of the Cosmos : Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene ISBN: 0375412883 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 10 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
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Title: Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics by Martinus J. G. Veltman, M. G. Veltman ISBN: 981238149X Publisher: World Scientific Pub Co Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: The Particle Odyssey: A Journey to the Heart of the Matter by Michael Marten, Christine Sutton, F. E. Particle Explosion Close ISBN: 0198504861 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell by A. Zee ISBN: 0691010196 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 10 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.50 |
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