The most traditional way to begin a study of quantum mechanics is to follow the historical developments—Planck’s radiation law, the Einstein-Debye theory of specific heats, the Bohr atom, de Broglie’s matter waves, and so forth—together with careful analyses of some key experiments such as the Compton effect, the Frank-Hertz experiment, and the Davisson-Germer-Thompson experiment. In that way we may come to appreciate how the physicists in the first quarter of the twentieth century were forced to abandon, little by little, the cherished concepts of classical physics and how, despite earlier false starts and wrong turns, the masters—Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and Dirac, among others—finally succeeded in formulating quantum mechanics as we know it today.
However, we do not follow the historical approach in this book. Instead, we start with an example that illustrates, perhaps more than any other example, the inadequacy of classical concepts in a fundamental way. We hope that by exposing the reader to a “shock treatment” at the onset, he or she may be attuned to what we might call the “quantum-mechanical way of thinking” at a very early stage.
That was my first book on quantum mechanics and I remember reading this. Accordingly, the Stern-Gerlach experiment is usually the first thing I explain to someone who is interested in QM, not these things about cats. Apart from that, I found the book to be a bit too terse and I had to read other books to really master the notation and so on.
It’s not an introductory text, so it probably goes way too fast if its your first book on QM. I agree about SG being a great experiment for explaining QM principles.
-- Modern Quantum Mechanics by J. J. Sakurai, the standard graduate level quantum textbook. Following this quote is a discussion of the Stern-Gerlach experiment. I post this quote because it is in line with Quantum Explanations.
That was my first book on quantum mechanics and I remember reading this. Accordingly, the Stern-Gerlach experiment is usually the first thing I explain to someone who is interested in QM, not these things about cats. Apart from that, I found the book to be a bit too terse and I had to read other books to really master the notation and so on.
It’s not an introductory text, so it probably goes way too fast if its your first book on QM. I agree about SG being a great experiment for explaining QM principles.