The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone

By Kenneth W. Ford

Book Overview

As Kenneth W. Ford shows us in The Quantum World, the laws governing the very small and the very swift defy common sense and stretch our minds to the limit. Drawing on a deep familiarity with the discoveries of the twentieth century, Ford gives an appealing account of quantum physics that will help the serious reader make sense of a science that, for all its successes, remains mysterious. In order to make the book even more suitable for classroom use, the author, assisted by Diane Goldstein, has included a new section of Quantum Questions at the back of the book. A separate answer manual to these 300+ questions is available; visit The Quantum World website for ordering information.

There is also a cloth edition of this book, which does not include the "Quantum Questions" included in this paperback edition.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067401832X
• ISBN13: 9780674018327
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Review By a Non-Physicist

Three themes are intertwined throughout this book: 1. Historical and biographical data on the men who, over about 50 years, discovered and described the weird world of quantum phenomenon and particle physics. The use of common sense had to be suspended during these investigations. 2. Accurate and intimidating descriptions of the particles and their interactions. I think it was Richard Feynman who said something like, "If I want to know the particulars about one of these particles, I know where to look it up." 3. Running commentary on how the quantum world works. Of the three, the first is well-done and interesting, the second is relentless but necessary (for the career physicist), and the third is simply brilliant. It explains in clear language why the quantum world is so unlike the common sense world we thought we lived in. Difficult concepts come alive - such as wave/particle duality, the exclusion principle, the uncertainly principle, symmetry, and entanglement, or as Einstein called it, "spooky action at a distance." Unless you live like a Mennonite or are on a boy scout campout, quantum physics technologies effect the way you live your daily life - the internet even grew out of early efforts of physicists to keep each other more immediately informed about advances in particle physics. For non-physics majors, consider reading on despite lack of total understanding or you might bog down in details. As the point of view changes, concepts are restated and you'll get another try at it. This stuff is weird! This is a great book that I highly recommend for any physicist who wants to brush up on particle physics and quantum phenomena, any undergrad or grad student in physics, or any other scientist types who are persistent enough to really want a handle on this fascinating but difficult subject.

A brief comment

I agree with my fellow top 50 reviewer, Dennis Littrell, that this is one of the best, and possibly THE best, book on quantum mechanics for the layman ever written. I also disagree with the spotlight review by the person from Ecuador that the book is a terrible one. No doubt this reader is one of those elitists for whom any book that attempts to be accessible to the non-scientist or non-specialist and doesn't have enough math to dazzle a David Hilbert is simply pandering to the ignorant and benighted. Yeah, well, when this reviewer wins his Nobel Prize maybe he can cop an attitude like that and make it stick. But I doubt he has. But getting back to the book, since my fellow Top 100 reviewer has pretty much said it all, I just wanted to say that I thought Ford's explanations of Feynman diagrams were the easiest and clearest to understand that I had seen yet. I've seen several other treatments but I always felt I wasn't really getting the whole thing, and Ford managed to explain it in a way that the layman can understand. Ford's explanations of many other quantum phenomena are equally clear and concise. By the way, although not a physicist, I'm not exactly a novice when it comes to science, and I see no problems with books like this. My masters and doctoral work were in neurophysiology and neuroanatomy, and theoretical and mathematical neurobiology and biophysics, but that is not the same as being a real physicist, so the full mathematical treatments would be too difficult for me too, although I have also read more advanced books on quantum theory that require far more math. But books like Ford's also do a service for scientists who were trained in other fields like myself who, although not untutored when it comes to physics and math, don't have the time to become as adept as a true physicist on all the theoretical details. Ford's book does that very well, and the previous comments by the other writer are pretty much totally off-base. And as you can see from the other reviews here, most are quite positive.

Brings the reader closer to QM than anything else I've read

This is the best book on quantum physics that I've ever read. What Kenneth Ford, retired director of the American Institute for Physics, set out to do (and I think largely accomplishes) is to make the world of the quantum (somewhat!) accessible to the general reader. Using a minimum of mathematics and a maximum of analogy and explanation expressed in a direct and readable style, Ford brings the "eerie theory" (p. 247) as close to the everyday mind as might be possible. Part of the reason for the book's success is that Ford had high school seniors at Germantown Academy carve "up the book among themselves and" provide "valuable (and unvarnished) feedback." But let's face it, even great physicists, entirely enmeshed in the difficult mathematics of QM--people who have devoted their lives to understanding the quantum world--can't answer John Wheeler's famous question: "How come the quantum?" The problem is not so much that the quantum world is complicated or that the math is difficult. The problem is that the "reality" of QM is fundamentally at odds with our everyday experience. Some of the ideas such as superposition, entanglement, fundamental probability, exclusion, and the famous uncertainty principle discovered by Werner Heisenberg, to mention just a few, are completely alien to our experience as human beings. In this regard I am reminded of the saying from Eastern religion that the world is not as we think it is. The world we see is a representation constructed by our minds in collaboration with our senses, honed through the ages by the evolutionary experience so that what we see and hear and feel and taste and smell and especially "understand" is conditioned by our need to survive. We do not see x-rays or radio waves or individual atoms, nor do we know intuitively that atoms are mostly empty space, nor do we appreciate that the colors we see are really just inside our heads, our way of apprehending the differing wave lengths of light coming from the objects in the world, not something intrinsic to those objects. Et cetera, one might say. So vast is the world and so tiny can things be (but not tinier than the Planck limit!--or so it is postulated) and so remote from our day-to-day needs that until recent times the extremes had no relevance for us. But everything has changed. Lasers, computers, nuclear reactors (and bombs) stem from knowledge of things impossible to see and even impossible to visualize or to fully appreciate. The technology works, the math rings true, and our world is changed for the better, for the worse, but regardless, changed forever. But how much can the average educated person with no mathematic training learn about QM? Is it a hopeless case? Certainly the complexities presented in this book just in terms of the number of particles and their properties are formidable. I would have to take notes and construct charts and review and re-review in order to keep the particles straight in my mind. (Ford provides

The most readable description of quantum physics

This book is pure pleasure. It reads a bit like an adventure story as the author explains how the concepts of the quantum theory were developed to make sense of experimental results in the subatomic realm. The author's engaging style makes quantum theory seem almost easy! This book is by far the best effort to bring the meaning of quantum theory to the nonscientist that I have read