Zweibach's book also has the benefit of being supplemented by 3 semesters of lectures given by Zweibach on MITx and RUclips. I think your Georgetown course was much harder than either the first or second semester MIT courses by Zweibach.
@8:30 do you need to "find wavefunctions" though? Look up Jacob Barandes. The Hilbert space is fictional and wavefunctions are not real (massive gauge redundancy, so they're unphysical). Barandes gets bare bones QM (but accommodates NRQM and RQM) from just a configuration space and the concept the dynamics is stochastic but "indivisible" generically, which implies non-Markov. Sure, this is still only a transition matrix formalism, since anything stochastic is in need of a fundamental account for it, but this is a terrific no nonsense approach to bare bones QM.
@@Achrononmaster It would take me some time to watch his videos, as the one paper i looked at was devoid of much information to understand what he is proposing. A problem I find with many of the philosophers of quantum mechanics, where words are more important than the mathematical formalism. But, I will say that I am not a big fan of wavefunctions. I think there are a small set of situations where they are useful, but on the whole, they are difficult to determine and don’t provide particularly useful information. They are nice to look at however, and certainly give one a feeling of accomplishment after finding them. I would suggest that philosophers explore local entanglement first, before jumping into the nonlocal versions, as there is much useful information in them, but they seem to always want to jump to the nonlocal variety.
Any thoughts Jim, on the MOOC craze totally fizzling out? Outside of Machine Learning, AI, programming etc. not only are there hardly any new MOOC courses offered in academic disciplines like physics, mathematics etc., but even well established courses like your QM course, and the MIT QM quantum sequence have faded considerably in terms of activity. In the MIT 8.06x QM course, as a discussion forum moderator I am down to about a question a week if that much, whereas I used to be in the 100's per week range in each of the 8.04,8.05,8.06 courses. I see similar decline in questions/comments in your QM course.
@@markweitzman I think it is on a serious decline. I don’t know how much longer it will last. I have seen enrollments drop by about a factor of 3, but I also see that there is much less discussion in the discussion boards. It could be that lifelong learners aren’t doing them as much and more people doing them are young. I find young folks ask fewer questions than older folks. I am hoping edX does not go under. My suspicion is the money 2U paid to buy edX might be used, at a much smaller fraction to buy it back, but I don’t know.
Looks like a very original approach, quite intriguing. If you don't use calculus, do you use some kind of algebraic version of the Schrödinger equation? How do you deal with time evolution?
@@hywelgriffiths5747 The energy eigenvalue equation is solve by Schroedinger’s factorization method. This gives energy eigenstates, but not wavefunctions, just as with the harmonic oscillator but a little more complicated. Wavefunctions are found by an operator form of the Rodrigues formula and other manipulations. Time evolution is done by the Trotter product formula. It might be a little clunky, but it provides a number of new and interesting insights into well known problems l;Ike magnetic resonance, which now can be solved for arbitrary spin rather than just spin one half.
@@kas8131 I paid for the open access version of the electronic book, allowing it to be free for all. I wanted to be able to get this new way of approaching quantum mechanics into the hands of as many people as possible. Hardcover has to be paid for.
I am a little worried about the part that says "math no more complicated than that in high school". High school math will be enough for the advanced topics?
@@Selenium117 Yes. Most advanced topics are algebraic, not requiring higher math. But, they are abstract, and being able to move into abstraction is the most severe potential barrier.
Zweibach's book also has the benefit of being supplemented by 3 semesters of lectures given by Zweibach on MITx and RUclips. I think your Georgetown course was much harder than either the first or second semester MIT courses by Zweibach.
It is certainly different. I don’t think it is harder, but everyone has their own taste.
@8:30 do you need to "find wavefunctions" though? Look up Jacob Barandes. The Hilbert space is fictional and wavefunctions are not real (massive gauge redundancy, so they're unphysical). Barandes gets bare bones QM (but accommodates NRQM and RQM) from just a configuration space and the concept the dynamics is stochastic but "indivisible" generically, which implies non-Markov. Sure, this is still only a transition matrix formalism, since anything stochastic is in need of a fundamental account for it, but this is a terrific no nonsense approach to bare bones QM.
@@Achrononmaster It would take me some time to watch his videos, as the one paper i looked at was devoid of much information to understand what he is proposing. A problem I find with many of the philosophers of quantum mechanics, where words are more important than the mathematical formalism. But, I will say that I am not a big fan of wavefunctions. I think there are a small set of situations where they are useful, but on the whole, they are difficult to determine and don’t provide particularly useful information. They are nice to look at however, and certainly give one a feeling of accomplishment after finding them. I would suggest that philosophers explore local entanglement first, before jumping into the nonlocal versions, as there is much useful information in them, but they seem to always want to jump to the nonlocal variety.
Any thoughts Jim, on the MOOC craze totally fizzling out? Outside of Machine Learning, AI, programming etc. not only are there hardly any new MOOC courses offered in academic disciplines like physics, mathematics etc., but even well established courses like your QM course, and the MIT QM quantum sequence have faded considerably in terms of activity. In the MIT 8.06x QM course, as a discussion forum moderator I am down to about a question a week if that much, whereas I used to be in the 100's per week range in each of the 8.04,8.05,8.06 courses. I see similar decline in questions/comments in your QM course.
@@markweitzman I think it is on a serious decline. I don’t know how much longer it will last. I have seen enrollments drop by about a factor of 3, but I also see that there is much less discussion in the discussion boards. It could be that lifelong learners aren’t doing them as much and more people doing them are young. I find young folks ask fewer questions than older folks. I am hoping edX does not go under. My suspicion is the money 2U paid to buy edX might be used, at a much smaller fraction to buy it back, but I don’t know.
Looks like a very original approach, quite intriguing. If you don't use calculus, do you use some kind of algebraic version of the Schrödinger equation? How do you deal with time evolution?
@@hywelgriffiths5747 The energy eigenvalue equation is solve by Schroedinger’s factorization method. This gives energy eigenstates, but not wavefunctions, just as with the harmonic oscillator but a little more complicated. Wavefunctions are found by an operator form of the Rodrigues formula and other manipulations. Time evolution is done by the Trotter product formula. It might be a little clunky, but it provides a number of new and interesting insights into well known problems l;Ike magnetic resonance, which now can be solved for arbitrary spin rather than just spin one half.
@quantum4everyone Interesting, thank you. Looking forward to see the book!
Really glad to hear this news. Is the book available in the market now?
@@sreedharb.k6274 No, I do not know how long it takes for production yet.
Any idea on pricing for the book? Hardcover or paperback?
Electronic is free. Hardcover, I do not have pricing info for it yet.
@@quantum4everyone Wow, that's great!
@@kas8131 I paid for the open access version of the electronic book, allowing it to be free for all. I wanted to be able to get this new way of approaching quantum mechanics into the hands of as many people as possible. Hardcover has to be paid for.
On the contents slide of your book, fundamental is misspelled for chapter 8.
@@markweitzman Thanks. I have a few typos found that need to be fixed.
Never say " off of" when you mean " on " or " from" 😅
I am a little worried about the part that says "math no more complicated than that in high school".
High school math will be enough for the advanced topics?
@@Selenium117 Yes. Most advanced topics are algebraic, not requiring higher math. But, they are abstract, and being able to move into abstraction is the most severe potential barrier.