What's the Matter with Waves?


Book Description

Like rocket science or brain surgery, quantum mechanics is pigeonholed as a daunting and inaccessible topic, which is best left to an elite or peculiar few. This classification was not earned without some degree of merit. Depending on perspective; quantum mechanics is a discipline or philosophy, a convention or conundrum, an answer or question. Authors have run the gamut from hand waving to heavy handed in hopes to dispel the common beliefs about quantum mechanics, but perhaps they continue to promulgate the stigma. The focus of this particular effort is to give the reader an introduction, if not at least an appreciation, of the role that linear algebra techniques play in the practical application of quantum mechanical methods. It interlaces aspects of the classical and quantum picture, including a number of both worked and parallel applications. Students with no prior experience in quantum mechanics, motivated graduate students, or researchers in other areas attempting to gain some introduction to quantum theory will find particular interest in this book.




What's the Matter with Waves?


Book Description

Like rocket science or brain surgery, quantum mechanics is pigeonholed as a daunting and inaccessible topic, which is best left to an elite or peculiar few. This classification was not earned without some degree of merit. Depending on perspective; quantum mechanics is a discipline or philosophy, a convention or conundrum, an answer or question. Authors have run the gamut from hand waving to heavy handed in hopes to dispel the common beliefs about quantum mechanics, but perhaps they continue to promulgate the stigma. The focus of this particular effort is to give the reader an introduction, if not at least an appreciation, of the role that linear algebra techniques play in the practical application of quantum mechanical methods. It interlaces aspects of the classical and quantum picture, including a number of both worked and parallel applications. Students with no prior experience in quantum mechanics, motivated graduate students, or researchers in other areas attempting to gain some introduction to quantum theory will find particular interest in this book.




What Is Real?


Book Description

"A thorough, illuminating exploration of the most consequential controversy raging in modern science." --New York Times Book Review An Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review Longlisted for PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Longlisted for Goodreads Choice Award Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's solipsistic and poorly reasoned Copenhagen interpretation. Indeed, questioning it has long meant professional ruin, yet some daring physicists, such as John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett, persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth. "An excellent, accessible account." --Wall Street Journal "Splendid. . . . Deeply detailed research, accompanied by charming anecdotes about the scientists." --Washington Post




University Physics


Book Description

University Physics is a three-volume collection that meets the scope and sequence requirements for two- and three-semester calculus-based physics courses. Volume 1 covers mechanics, sound, oscillations, and waves. Volume 2 covers thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, and Volume 3 covers optics and modern physics. This textbook emphasizes connections between between theory and application, making physics concepts interesting and accessible to students while maintaining the mathematical rigor inherent in the subject. Frequent, strong examples focus on how to approach a problem, how to work with the equations, and how to check and generalize the result. The text and images in this textbook are grayscale.




How to Understand Quantum Mechanics


Book Description

How to Understand Quantum Mechanics presents an accessible introduction to understanding quantum mechanics in a natural and intuitive way, which was advocated by Erwin Schroedinger and Albert Einstein. A theoretical physicist reveals dozens of easy tricks that avoid long calculations, makes complicated things simple, and bypasses the worthless anguish of famous scientists who died in angst. The author's approach is light-hearted, and the book is written to be read without equations, however all relevant equations still appear with explanations as to what they mean. The book entertainingly rejects quantum disinformation, the MKS unit system (obsolete), pompous non-explanations, pompous people, the hoax of the 'uncertainty principle' (it is just a math relation), and the accumulated junk-DNA that got into the quantum operating system by misreporting it. The order of presentation is new and also unique by warning about traps to be avoided, while separating topics such as quantum probability to let the Schroedinger equation be appreciated in the simplest way on its own terms. This is also the first book on quantum theory that is not based on arbitrary and confusing axioms or foundation principles. The author is so unprincipled he shows where obsolete principles duplicated basic math facts, became redundant, and sometimes were just pawns in academic turf wars. The book has many original topics not found elsewhere, and completely researched references to original historical sources and anecdotes concerting the unrecognized scientists who actually did discover things, did not all get Nobel prizes, and yet had interesting productive lives.




The Everyday Physics of Hearing and Vision


Book Description

Humans receive the vast majority of sensory perception through the eyes and ears. This non-technical book examines the everyday physics behind hearing and vision to help readers understand more about themselves and their physical environment. It begins wit




Coherent atomic matter waves - Ondes de matiere coherentes


Book Description

This book, devoted to the study of quantum effects in atomic systems, reviews the state of the art in the fields of Bose--Einstein condensation, quantum information processing, and the problems of propagation of matter waves in complex media. The specific topics include: theory and experiments in Bose--Einstein condensation, theory and experiments on decoherence phenomena in simple quantum systems and the connection to quantum measurement, atom interferometry, quantum computing, multiple scattering problems in atomic physics, quantum and nonlinear optics in a photonic band gap and quantum chaos and atomic physics. Pedagogical in style, the articles address PhD students as well as researchers.




Tour of the Electromagnetic Spectrum


Book Description




Waves


Book Description

Waves are everywhere in our daily life. We all experience sound and light with our ears and eyes, we use microwaves to cook, and radio waves are transmitted from and are received by our cell phones. These are just some examples of waves that carry energy from point A to B. However, we may not know details of the physics underlying all these waves. It is important to understand the mechanisms that generate wave dynamics for a given system. It is not straightforward to explain how an electromagnetic field becomes oscillatory and propagates as a wave. Waves sometimes represent the underlying dynamics of observed phenomena at a fundamental level of physics. This book is designed to explore these mechanisms by discussing various aspects of wave dynamics from as many perspectives as possible. The target audiences are undergraduate students majoring in engineering science and graduate students majoring in general engineering. Going beyond the typical approach to learning science, this book discusses wave dynamics and related concepts at various levels of mathematics and physics, sometimes touching on profound physics behind them. This book was written to help readers learn wave dynamics on a deep physical level, and develop innovative ideas in their own fields.




Principles Of Space-time-matter: Cosmology, Particles And Waves In Five Dimensions


Book Description

'For those interested, the book is a good and well-written overview of the work of Wesson and his collaborators. For those with a general interest in extensions of standard physics, accessibility is strongly dependent on the reader’s technical background, though the good structure of the book and copious references (including many to work by more-mainstream physicists on related topics) make that possible for those willing to invest some time.'The Observatory MagazineThis book is a summing up of the prospects for unification between relativity and particle physics based on the extension of Einstein's theory of General Relativity to five dimensions. This subject was first established by Paul Wesson in his previous best-seller, Space-Time-Matter, and discussed from a different perspective in Five-Dimensional Physics, both published by World Scientific in 1999 and 2006 respectively. This third book brings the field up to date and details many new developments and connections to particle theory and wave mechanics in particular. It was in largely finished form at the time of Paul Wesson's untimely death in 2015, and has been completed and expanded by his former student and longtime collaborator, James Overduin.