Hello to all the many people who are far more intelligent than I.

I have recently become very interested in the field of quantum physics due to the whole mystery surrounding the whole topic. There is a significant amount of media regarding this topic, however it is rarely explained in more detail than "some people did some math wizardry and some really weird stuff came out". As to begin to have a slight understanding of the theory which has been the most accurate thing humanity has conceived of, I began with a shot in the dark and typed "Introduction to quantum mechanics" into the google search bar, and clicked on the first link that I saw that did not appear to be an ad, or had a pay wall before getting to the information. I ended up reading a book called Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by David J. Griffiths. I tried to begin reading the book, but after reading the forward, I quickly realized that I was in way over my head with the complexity. Does anyone have advice on what prerequisite information I should seek before attempting to go back into the book, and/or is there another book which would be better to start with?

Thank you for any advice given

36 minutes ago, Danvalli said:

Hello to all the many people who are far more intelligent than I.

I have recently become very interested in the field of quantum physics due to the whole mystery surrounding the whole topic. There is a significant amount of media regarding this topic, however it is rarely explained in more detail than "some people did some math wizardry and some really weird stuff came out". As to begin to have a slight understanding of the theory which has been the most accurate thing humanity has conceived of, I began with a shot in the dark and typed "Introduction to quantum mechanics" into the google search bar, and clicked on the first link that I saw that did not appear to be an ad, or had a pay wall before getting to the information. I ended up reading a book called Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by David J. Griffiths. I tried to begin reading the book, but after reading the forward, I quickly realized that I was in way over my head with the complexity. Does anyone have advice on what prerequisite information I should seek before attempting to go back into the book, and/or is there another book which would be better to start with?

Thank you for any advice given

There is a non-mathematical explanation of quantum mechanical concepts in “Quanta” by P W Atkins, which is well-regarded. But it is arranged alphabetically, so perhaps better as a reference book than to start at A and read cover to cover.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/952797.Quanta

I would also recommend reading some of the history of how QM came to be developed, especially :

- the “ultraviolet catastrophe”

- the photo-electric effect

- the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom and its limitations

Do you have any background in physics, e.g. a school level understanding of the physics of waves? That would be helpful.

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

I would also recommend reading some of the history of how QM came to be developed

I very much second exchemist's advice. Without the mathematical background needed (calculus, linear algebra, group theory), and basic knowledge of classical mechanics (Newtonian mechanics, especially in the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulation) you will not get very far in quantum mechanics. So yes, start with a book about the history of quantum mechanics. I liked Jim Baggot's The Quantum Story: A history in 40 moments very much. But you can take any quantum history book, just be sure to scan it on how much is explained mathematically. See if you could possibly understand it (many books have a 'further reading' section, that can be helpful).

If you take any modern plain textbook, you will miss how and why quantum physicists got their ideas. Quantum physics is, so to speak, presented as a ready made building (only the deepest underground floors, and the highest floors are not quite ready yet...). You should 'spiral in' on the real substance of QM: from easy, to more and more advanced.

Popular science books are OK, but you must realise that you only get the gist of QM. Often analogies are used to describe it, but analogies are not the real stuff. They give an impression of what QM is, not how it really works.

A step closer you could get with Giancarlo Ghirardi's Sneaking a Look at God's Cards: Unraveling the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics. It tries to give an overview of QM, with not too much mathematics, but minimising misguiding analogies.

Another way, if you are highly motivated, is Leonard Susskind's 'Theoretical Minimum' series. It builds up from the ground, also of the mathematics needed. You should start studying (just 'reading' is not enough) Classical Mechanics', and only then study the 'Quantum Mechanics' volume.

And then you can go on with Quantum Field Theory, AFAIK the most modern formulation of QM.

Avoid the two Brians: Brian Greene and Brian Cox. They use QM as entertainment. They will not give you any real insight in QM. Sean Carroll is also not too bad, but you should be aware that he does not distinguish clearly enough between 'real QM' and interpretations of it. But the Brians are worse in this respect.

And then there is an interesting website of Gerard 't Hooft: https://goodtheorist.science/index.html. Be sure to read this small foreword.

HTH

Edited April 30Apr 30 by Eise

While you can learn with online videos and books, if you are genuinely interested may be sign up for courses at your local university if they offer continuing learning programs. You could also look at graded courses on platforms such as coursera. Quantum Mechanic's core lies into the mathematics that can be harder to understand so may be start with studying mathematics. You might take longer to learn the mathematics but it will be worth your time.

If you are looking for a book J.J. Sakurai's mooks is used as a textbook. And Leonard's Susskind's lectures are awesome and freely available on youtube.

Good Luck. I am really happy to see people are interested in learning QM.

11 hours ago, Danvalli said:

Hello to all the many people who are far more intelligent than I.

I have recently become very interested in the field of quantum physics due to the whole mystery surrounding the whole topic. There is a significant amount of media regarding this topic, however it is rarely explained in more detail than "some people did some math wizardry and some really weird stuff came out". As to begin to have a slight understanding of the theory which has been the most accurate thing humanity has conceived of, I began with a shot in the dark and typed "Introduction to quantum mechanics" into the google search bar, and clicked on the first link that I saw that did not appear to be an ad, or had a pay wall before getting to the information. I ended up reading a book called Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by David J. Griffiths. I tried to begin reading the book, but after reading the forward, I quickly realized that I was in way over my head with the complexity. Does anyone have advice on what prerequisite information I should seek before attempting to go back into the book, and/or is there another book which would be better to start with?

Thank you for any advice given

I am not more intelligent than you, but perhaps I could help. However my first question is do you have a strong grasp of higher level mathematics and a well enough understanding of "forces in motion?"

1 hour ago, Mahi_sayli said:

While you can learn with online videos and books, if you are genuinely interested may be sign up for courses at your local university if they offer continuing learning programs. You could also look at graded courses on platforms such as coursera. Quantum Mechanic's core lies into the mathematics that can be harder to understand so may be start with studying mathematics. You might take longer to learn the mathematics but it will be worth your time.

If you are looking for a book J.J. Sakurai's mooks is used as a textbook. And Leonard's Susskind's lectures are awesome and freely available on youtube.

Good Luck. I am really happy to see people are interested in learning QM.

I'm not sure I entirely agree about the mathematics. You can put people off needlessly by overstressing the mathematics.

One can get a pretty good grasp of how QM works for most purposes with a decent understanding of the physics of waves. Sure, if you want to do it properly you have to get into QM operators, eigenvectors in Hilbert space and all that, but most chemists at least can get a feel for it by understanding the physics of waves: standing waves, interference and superposition, Fourier sum of frequencies and so on. That's enough to understand atomic structure and spectra, chemical bonding and the Uncertainty Principle.

My own way into it was via the history that led to QM and a 6th form school level understanding of waves - and then at uni I was sufficiently prepared with the physical concepts to brace myself for getting into the maths.

Edited April 30Apr 30 by exchemist

5 hours ago, Danvalli said:

Hello to all the many people who are far more intelligent than I.

I have recently become very interested in the field of quantum physics due to the whole mystery surrounding the whole topic. There is a significant amount of media regarding this topic, however it is rarely explained in more detail than "some people did some math wizardry and some really weird stuff came out". As to begin to have a slight understanding of the theory which has been the most accurate thing humanity has conceived of, I began with a shot in the dark and typed "Introduction to quantum mechanics" into the google search bar, and clicked on the first link that I saw that did not appear to be an ad, or had a pay wall before getting to the information. I ended up reading a book called Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by David J. Griffiths. I tried to begin reading the book, but after reading the forward, I quickly realized that I was in way over my head with the complexity. Does anyone have advice on what prerequisite information I should seek before attempting to go back into the book, and/or is there another book which would be better to start with?

Thank you for any advice given

First let me say welcome and +1 for encouragement at having the commonsense to create your post the way it is.
I see that there are already several helpful replies as a result.

Wow Griffiths. His introduction to books are university level, going into postgraduate.

Anyway I am going to pontificate a bit then offer a couple of books that could be helpful (and obtained cheaply second hand) they are both accessible to someone who has a reasonable grasp of high school maths.
This is not to say that maths is not necessary for Physics especially, but you simply need to be able to recognise what is going on, you do not need to solve maths that has taken many geniuses a century to develop it.

So QM.

Quantum mechanics is basically about energy and its relationship to other physical quantities.

We are considering Physics so physical quantities. These may be material - ie matter or they may be non material ie fields, shadows and abstract quantities.

Both material and non material quantities we deal with are every bit as 'real' as each other.

There is an energy principle known as the principle of least energy which simply asserts that a system will seek, try or tend to achieve a state of least (or lowest) energy.

This is what governs my interactions in Physics and leads us to QM.

But we need to know what a 'system' is or means.
A system may be an atom, an electron, a bag of potatoes, a pile of sand, the electric field surrounding an electric charge, or any part of the universe which we can isolate or separate by drawing an imaginary bokoundary around.

I said atoms, and it was thought for a long time that atoms were the smallest posiible piece of matter which can combine to form molecules. We now know that atoms have a structure that is they are made up of smaller pieces, which in turn are made up of yet smaller pieces.....

Anyway one of the successes of QM is to explain how and why atoms join together to form molecules and smaller pieces join together to form atoms.

It is our (by now) old friend the principle of least energy.

In fact this goes so far as to explain why there is such a physical quantity we call mass. I see that Eise has referred to 't Hooft - he had a big hand in that discovery.

OK the books

They are both by professors of Physics, well respected for their communication skills.

The first is specifically QM, although Chad Orzel has also done one about relativity.

The second covers a much wider area of modern physics and would stand you in good stead for an introduction to this.

Go well in your studies

13 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I'm not sure I entirely agree about the mathematics. You can put people off needlessly by overstressing the mathematics.

One can get a pretty good grasp of how QM works for most purposes with a decent understanding of the physics of waves. Sure, if you want to do it properly you have to get into QM operators, eigenvectors in Hilbert space and all that, but most chemists at least can get a feel for it by understanding the physics of waves: standing waves, interference and superposition, Fourier sum of frequencies and so on. That's enough to understand atomic structure and spectra, chemical bonding and the Uncertainty Principle.

My own way into it was via the history that led to QM and a 6th form school level understanding of waves - and then at uni I was sufficiently prepared with the physical concepts to brace myself for getting into the maths.

I agree that the math part could needlessly put some people off. It depends on what is user's motivation behind learning though. I would still say one should at least know how to use Schrodinger's Equation to calculate probability distribution of the states. But really depends on OP's motivation.

Danvalli, you can start learn the parts that you enjoy and then may be move to more involved parts.

4 minutes ago, Mahi_sayli said:

I agree that the math part could needlessly put some people off. It depends on what is user's motivation behind learning though. I would still say one should at least know how to use Schrodinger's Equation to calculate probability distribution of the states. But really depends on OP's motivation.

Danvalli, you can start learn the parts that you enjoy and then may be move to more involved parts.

Almost nobody has to actually solve Schrödinger’s equation. You generally work with pictures of the probability distributions. The key thing is to understand the phase and the symmetry, where the nodes are etc.these are qualitative features of the solutions.

Edited April 30Apr 30 by exchemist

27 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Almost nobody has to actually solve Schrödinger’s equation. You generally work with pictures of the probability distributions. The key thing is to understand the phase and the symmetry, where the nodes are etc.these are qualitative features of the solutions.

I thought it was finding the wave function (ψ) that describes the state of a quantum system...

1 minute ago, Sohan Lalwani said:

I thought it was finding the wave function (ψ) that describes the state of a quantum system...

Normally one can work with a wave function without having an exact solution to the wave equation, based on its qualitative properties. The actual solutions are very cumbersome algebra and exact solutions are only possible for the very simplest systems, e.g. the hydrogen atom.

Edited April 30Apr 30 by exchemist

Just now, exchemist said:

Normally one works with a wave function without having an exact solution to the wave equation, based on its qualitative properties. The actual solutions are very cumbersome algebra and exact solutions are only possible for the very simplest systems, e.g. the hydrogen atom.

I see, now I have an idea for ISEF (just kidding)

13 hours ago, Danvalli said:

I quickly realized that I was in way over my head with the complexity. Does anyone have advice on what prerequisite information I should seek before attempting to go back into the book, and/or is there another book which would be better to start with?

You should start with the basics.

Photoelectric effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect

Photon matter interactions:

To begin with, search the web for titles appearing in the film + “Wikipedia”.

One may wonder why these electrons are depicted as in the thumbnail above.(grouped together):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aufbau_principle

The innermost electrons require higher energy to remove than the outermost electrons (fairly simple and obvious rule):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionization_energy

which leads us to historical knowledge about spectral lines:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_line

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmer_series

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rydberg_formula

If you are interested in history (i.e., a timeline of discoveries)

If you need a demonstration of the quantum world with your own eyes, you need to see some kind of particle detector, such as a cloud chamber:

other films:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cloud+chamber

If a word is incomprehensible, click the link on Wikipedia to see the description.

If you want to learn to do QM, math is necessary, but learning about QM, not so much.

But you do need to understand things about energy and momentum (angular momentum in particular)

The undergrad QM class I took had a fair amount of history in it, to ease the students into the really new concepts of quantized values and treating things as waves. One reason the Bohr model is still discussed.

5 hours ago, swansont said:

If you want to learn to do QM, math is necessary, but learning about QM, not so much.

But you do need to understand things about energy and momentum (angular momentum in particular)

The undergrad QM class I took had a fair amount of history in it, to ease the students into the really new concepts of quantized values and treating things as waves. One reason the Bohr model is still discussed.

Do you have any material you would recommend regarding that subject matter? Perhaps OP may find it of value.

On 4/30/2025 at 3:15 PM, Mahi_sayli said:

While you can learn with online videos and books, if you are genuinely interested may be sign up for courses at your local university if they offer continuing learning programs. You could also look at graded courses on platforms such as coursera. Quantum Mechanic's core lies into the mathematics that can be harder to understand so may be start with studying mathematics. You might take longer to learn the mathematics but it will be worth your time.

If you are looking for a book J.J. Sakurai's mooks is used as a textbook. And Leonard's Susskind's lectures are awesome and freely available on youtube.

Good Luck. I am really happy to see people are interested in learning QM.

Susskind has a series of books too, not too expensive. The Theoretical Minimum series.