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Title: Principles of Quantum Mechanics
ISBN: 0306447908
Author:
R. Shankar
Publicate Date: 1994-09-01
Publish: 1994-09-01
List Price: $95.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $54.91
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $54.94
Amazon Merchant Price: $63.96
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Perfect on its aim
Quatum Mechanics is conceptually hard enough itself to get more trouble than necessary trying to assimilate the language it's written in - maths. For someone who has struggled with Cohen-Tanoudji to understand all the mathematical apparatus concerning the description of quantum mechanical phenomena, it felt quite comforting to end up with this book.
Of course this is not Cohen-Tanoudji, and you cannot find in it everything you would look for, but it doesn't pretend to neither. This is, more than a pure physics text, a progressive approach to Dirac notation, Hilbert spaces and not-easy-to-go-with concepts whose understanding is vital to get along with everything that comes later.
In my opinion, this is a beginning, and a rather good one. But that's it. Do not expect for more. You'll have the fundamentals of Hydrogen atom, momentum coupling, spin, perturbation theory, etc. and the maths underneath them.
For that reason, I find the price a bit high, and would not recommend it for a graduate level, maybe just in case quantum is not your primary field of work.
A "but": despite it's supposedly simple and self-contained, it sometimes lacks deeper explanations of results the author gets to by apparently 'divine intervention'.
For learning purposes, starting students will find a useful tool to deal with Quantum Mechanics and its complexity.
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2: A Well-Written Introduction
This is probably the best book to learn the subject at an advanced undergraduate or a first-year graduate level. It is clearly written, doesn't skip steps in derivations, doesn't assume any prior knowledge of quantum mechanics (unlike Sakurai), and is reasonably complete. The last chapter on path integrals and applications, in particular, is outstanding.
Answers to end-of-chapter problems are provided, making this book a good choice for self-study.
There are, unfortunately, two drawbacks. The first and by far the more significant one is that the problems are, generally, too easy. While simple confidence-building exercises are important and their presence is never unwelcome, virtually every problem here is of this type. Thus, an inexperienced student going through the book on his own might fall victim to a false sense of mastery. This is indeed the one area where a supplement is particularly helpful. The second and relatively minor drawback is that some topics aren't developed in as much depth as they are in similar books. Compare, for example, Sakurai's exemplary chapter on angular momentum to Shankar's merely adequate treatment.
In all, a fine book to learn from and a useful book to have.
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3: An impressive QM book.
I am a lecturer who teach QM mostly. I've read various QM books so far. Apart from being reader-friendly, Shankar's book touches my mind in several points. Dirac equation (chapter20) is superbly written. The book explains very well how the matrices Alpha's and Beta are chosen to form the Dirac Hamiltonian. The fact that they are traceless and they have eigenvalues +1 or -1 is awesome. Furthermore, it gives a clear and beautiful picture that Dirac equation can reduce to Schroedinger one with E&M interaction plus H-fine structure whereas most other QM books treat this in more-unfriendly ways. The first 7 chapters may be read by advanced undergrad students. Stern-Gerlach experiment is well explained compared with averaged QM book. Another touching point is the Chapter of spin. Most QM books seem not to mention the linear independence of 4 Pauli matrices clearly whereas it is nicely proved in Shankar's book. The seeming drawback in my viewpoint is that path integrals should not be treated too much in a QM book(2 Chapters). It should be contained in the books of special fields. Something like 2nd quantization or field operator should be instead. However, in overall, this QM book is quite valuable to our academic world, and deserves 5 stars.
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4: Warning Not For Those Who Are Struggling
I bought this book when I tried to learn QM by myself. I am not stupid
and I know how to differentiate and to integrate but boy is this book
hard to understand. This is a book for people who already understand
the subject not for those who have major problems understanding it.
If you have an IQ of 170 then this book is for you. If you are around
the 120-130 mark and have trouble with advanced math I recommend starting
with Linus Paulings - Introduction To Quantum Mechanics.
You have been warned :)
John
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5: Excellent Text
Having been scouring my old college text and many other books on Quantum Mechanics I found them lacking in their ability to explain the mathematics behind the theory. This text approaches the subject by way of Linear Algebra and Vector Spaces.
Shankar's Text lays everything out brilliantly buy hitting the mathmatics FIRST then going into the theory. I am working my way through the first chapter on the mathematics which is very clear so I have no doubts that the text on the theory will be just as lucid.
Once you can turn the crank of the mathematics then the theory will be open to study for you. That's the trick.
Excellent text for someone who has had either a good grounding in linear algebra or undergraduate QM.
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