can anybody recommend an introductory quantum mechanics
eder izaguirre
the undergraduate level?. I intend to use it for self-study.
Thanks in advance.
FrediFizzx
news:bCYfc.169$eK3...@nwrdny01.gnilink.net...
| could anybody recommend a good introductory quantum mechanics textbook for
| the undergraduate level?. I intend to use it for self-study.
| Thanks in advance.
Sure. "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" by Griffiths is OK but there are
probably better ones. Since I am also doing self-study of QM, I find this
book very understandable. But in the usual Griffiths' style, he depends on
the student working out problems for further treatment later on. This is
somewhat of a pain for a self-study student but is not too bad. He
sometimes tells what the answers are later on. So read the book fast one
time and then go back and study it.
FrediFizzx
Jon Bell
eder izaguirre <i.e...@verizon.net> wrote:
>could anybody recommend a good introductory quantum mechanics textbook for
>the undergraduate level?. I intend to use it for self-study.
Try Morrison's "Understanding Quantum Physics". I think it would be good
for self study because it explicitly covers the mathematical details that
many textbooks skim over (assuming that the student is familiar with them
already).
--
Jon Bell <jtbe...@presby.edu> Presbyterian College
Dept. of Physics and Computer Science Clinton, South Carolina USA
Jim Heckman
On 16-Apr-2004, "eder izaguirre" <i.e...@verizon.net>
wrote in message <bCYfc.169$eK3...@nwrdny01.gnilink.net>:
> could anybody recommend a good introductory quantum mechanics textbook for
> the undergraduate level?. I intend to use it for self-study.
> Thanks in advance.
I still like Cohen-Tannoudji/Diu/Laloe (sp?). Some find it too
wordy, and its approach is a little dated by now, but it
explains the math from the ground up and has lots of fully
worked examples.
--
Jim Heckman
car...@no-physics-spam.ucdavis.edu
I'm teaching undergraduate quantum mechanics this quarter, and using
Griffiths as my main text. It's probably the most popular one for
such courses, at least among major universities in the US, judging
from Web pages I've looked at. It has a good assortment of topics,
and won't overwhelm you with the volume of material and the number
of different topics, as many texts will. (Authors of textbooks are
under some pressure to include everything anyone teaching a course
might want to cover; it may increase sales, but it results in bulky,
hard-to-follow, and somewhat intimidating books.)
As you say, though, Griffiths leaves a lot to problems, and also has
fairly few examples (though more in the new edition that was just
released). So I'm also recommending Zettili's _Quantum Mechanics:
Concepts and Applications_, which has an enormous number of worked
examples.
Steve Carlip
Yoyoma_2
> FrediFizzx <fredi...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>"eder izaguirre" <i.e...@verizon.net> wrote in message
>>news:bCYfc.169$eK3...@nwrdny01.gnilink.net...
>>| could anybody recommend a good introductory quantum mechanics textbook for
>>| the undergraduate level?. I intend to use it for self-study.
>>| Thanks in advance.
>
>
>>Sure. "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" by Griffiths is OK but there are
>>probably better ones. Since I am also doing self-study of QM, I find this
>>book very understandable. But in the usual Griffiths' style, he depends on
>>the student working out problems for further treatment later on. This is
>>somewhat of a pain for a self-study student but is not too bad. He
>>sometimes tells what the answers are later on. So read the book fast one
>>time and then go back and study it.
We are engineers and we are studying the "Concepts of Modern Physics",
sixth edition by Arthur Beiser. ISBN: 0-07-244-848-2 and also has a
solution manual.
Its an Introduction to QM so you will get the basic theory and ideas
around it, and solve a couple QM problems (3D particle in a box,
infinite potential wells, finite potential wells etc). plus you will get
some other neat modern physics stuff like the compton effect, particle
wave theory, derivation of heisenberg uncertainty principle, a full
treatment to calculate the hydrogen atom, finite structures, statistical
mechanics, introduction to semiconductor theory, solid state theory etc..
Its a near little book, you don't need any great advanced math to use
it. A basic ODE and some trig, that's it.
FrediFizzx
news:c616n7$77o$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu...
Thanks, I will look into getting Zettili's book. The important thing is
that Griffiths has an uncanny knack of making tough subjects understandable
with some decent studying effort on the part of the student. At least in my
case. Which is good for someone like myself trying to learn on their own.
You guys on the newsgroups are my professors sometimes. ;-)
FrediFizzx
Hendrik van Hees
It depends upon the idea of "good". There are a lot of books which look
easy at the first glance, but do not explain the stuff right from the
very beginning. My favourite is
Leslie, E. Ballentine
Quantum Mechanics, A Modern Development
World Scientific
2nd edition, 1998
Another very good one is the classical book by PAM. Dirac, Principles of
Quantum Mechanics (I'm not sure whether this is the precise title, but
you'll surely find it in your bib).
--
Hendrik van Hees Cyclotron Institute
Phone: +1 979/845-1411 Texas A&M University
Fax: +1 979/845-1899 Cyclotron Institute, MS-3366
http://theory.gsi.de/~vanhees/ College Station, TX 77843-3366
Patrick Amon
Shankar's "Principles of Quantum Mechanics", 1st Edition. This was the
book I used (a little over a decade ago) when I studied graduate QM. I
heard the second edition isn't as good (it has mistakes unlike the
first), so I can only recommend the first although I've never
personally checked the second one.
The first half of the book doesn't do any QM at all! It goes into
Hilbert spaces and advanced formulations of Classical Mechanics and
E&M. Only in the second part of the book is QM as such really
introduced (in the first edition without any coverage of the path
integral formalism although that was apparently remedied in the second
one).
I think that really understanding the background material first then
truly allows you to (i) understand the formalism and not some other
person's intepretation of it (ii) use the formalism to make
calculations.
This sets the stage both from a computational and a "philosophical"
standpoints.
It's not the most straightforward way to get to something useful but I
don't think it's such a bad one either.
(BTW: I used this for self-study before I took the graduate class -
for the second semester I only took the final and not the class, so I
know firsthand it was a good book for self-study).
Good luck!
Patrick
(patric...@cern.ch)
Hendrik van Hees <he...@comp.tamu.edu> wrote in message news:<c6f80f$bipo2$1...@ID-71437.news.uni-berlin.de>...
Mike M. Miskulin
<bCYfc.169$eK3...@nwrdny01.gnilink.net>:
>could anybody recommend a good introductory quantum mechanics textbook for
>the undergraduate level?. I intend to use it for self-study.
>Thanks in advance.
Quite a bit behind reading these posts, but have you taken a look
at Liboff Intro to QM?