Quantum Physics For Dummies

Thought there would be less mathematics but for those who need to know it I suppose its a good introduction.I was expecting more in the way of the latest theories on the multiverse etc in other words did not know it was expectinga budding university graduate. Maybe in another universe, I'm right, but in this one the maths is a little too good for me!I wont hesitate to recommend it to such a university graduate though, since I felt sure I could understand it if I had a realneed to. Not for me, but definitely for someone else.

This book assumes a lot of for knowledge. To what seems to me to be undergraduate level. Including a working knowledge of mathematics also to what seems to be degree level. I'm sure it's a great book but not for dummies.

Everything you would expect in a book from the "Dummies" series. Unintimidating and well structured.perhaps the title is misleading. It's very definitely not a book for the absolute beginner.It does place into context all the random snippets you may have picked up about Quantum Physics, and gives the mathematics associated with things you already knew. So in that sense, it's a crib-sheet for somebody hoping to pass the final exams of their physics degree! This is a Quantum Mechanics refresher, not an introduction, and you'll need some university-level maths behind you in order to follow it.In my case some of the pages had slight tears at the edges. I think the paper was catching in machinery at the factory. It doesn't look like the damage was caused by Amazon employees. For the price, not worth sending it back. (I just knocked off a star.)

This is a complex subject well explained.

This is an excellent work for university students, but of little use to the layman unless they're into higher maths..

It was alarming to see the one-star reviews of this book at 24 percent, higher than any other professionally-produced work I can remember. But I wasn't put off buying since most of the complaints were concerned about the complexity of the mathematics. This is what I expected and what I wanted from the book; I've read enough "pop science" books to want something with a little more meat. Learning the mathematical foundations of quantum physics is a necessary and inescapable fact of understanding it properly.However, after working through the book, I think the negative reviewers have a point. I feel the problem is not so much the maths but the context and order in which information is presented. The author may have been hampered by the formatting requirements of writing a Dummies book. For example, on page 28, after some fairly simple stuff about matrices we are suddenly informed by a hand icon that we should REMEMBER:"In general, a set of vectors phi-N in Hilbert space is linearly independent if the only solution to the following equation is that all the coefficients a-N = 0;[equation]That is, as long as you can't write any one vector as a linear combination of the others, the vectors are linearly independent and so form a valid basis in Hilbert space."The problem isn't the equation. It's that this statement appears with no context and, at this stage, no reason given as to why we should "remember" it. We might be able to guess that reason (if we have the necessary background in vector spaces or co-ordinate systems) but I don't think we should have to. We haven't even yet been told what a Hilbert space is. (It's one of the author's stated "Foolish Assumptions" that we're already supposed to know about them).In a more natural expositional format the author would not be able to get away with such a glaring lack of context. It would be obvious to him or his editors that something didn't make sense here. The author would be forced to lead into things logically, by first explaining the need for a particular property and then by explaining the mathematics of how it's accomplished.I dispute the statement on page 5 that you can "jump in anywhere" in the book. If you do, you'll have a lot of back-referencing to do.To understand quantum physics you do indeed have to understand some complicated maths - there's no getting away from that - but the truth is that I've seen it explained better. At the time of writing there's a PDF called (somewhat understatedly) "Quantum Physics Notes" by J Cresser, which is freely downloadable from the Macquarie University website. It introduces each concept in a far more natural way, flowing from the historical context to the modern - without shying away from any of the mathematics. If I could go back and buy that document in book form instead of Quantum Physics for Dummies, I would.However, unlike many other reviewers here I won't be returning this book. After I've finished going through the Cresser PDF I'll revisit the book and will no doubt find a lot of useful information within. For this reason, and for the fact that I learned some things from it (for example - what a "ket" is) I will not give it a one-star review.Quantum Physics for Dummies strains the Dummies series concept to breaking point - and maybe beyond. I feel the subject went out of the series editors' zones of expertise and was accepted for publication at a too-early stage. It would benefit from a rewrite, shifting the focus to the introductory and leaving the later topics to more advanced texts.

This book is 'for dummies', provided they already have significant appreciation of physics and maths....so not so dumb...but the style is user friendly and the material is worth persevering with. Quite good value for the content.

Contains many maths formula that I could not zoom on, so can't read as far too small. Very disappointing, I was looking forward to read it! Unfortunately left it too late for a refund.