Modern quantum mechanics

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1. zeofigAug 2024
   The Stern-Gerlach experiment is imo the best way to learn the basic idea of quantum mechanics as derived from a reasonably simple experiment. Much better than the double-slit experiment which is more confusing and about which there is a lot of terribly incorrect discussion online.

   I would recommend another source with some nice diagrams though, like hyperphysics, or the opening chapter of Modern Quantum Mechanics by Sakurai (although it's a graduate level book, the opening chapter is simple enough).

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2. BostonianSep 2021
   Physics -- paper and pencil, in the late 1980s, at Harvard. Books such as Purcell, "Electricity and Magnetism", Reif, "Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics", Liboff, "Introductory Quantum Mechanics", Sakurai, "Modern Quantum Mechanics", Ashcroft and Mermin, "Solid State Physics", Brown and Churchill, "Complex Variables and Applications", and "Fourier Series and Boundary Value Problems".
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3. thisiscorrectApr 2021
   Mine is Sakurai's "Modern Quantum Mechanics." But it sounds like you're really asking which book would be good for you to learn about quantum mechanics and also the Standard Model of particle physics.
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4. edna314Jan 2018
   Certainly a matter of taste. I'd recommend "Modern Quantum Mechanics" from Sakurai.
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5. evanbJul 2017
   I broke up my list into cultural (that is, about the people, history, etc), popular (that is, not aimed at a student or an expert), and texts.

   CULTURAL

   Einstein - Essays in Humanism

   Frayn - Copenhagen

   Feynman - Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

   Feynman - What Do You Care What Other People Think?

   de Grasse Tyson - Death by Black Hole

   Hoffman - The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

   Kaiser - Drawing Theories Apart

   Kaiser - How the Hippied Saved Physics

   Macaulay - The Way Things Work

   Paulos - Innumeracy

   Sagan - Cosmos

   Sagan - Broca's Brain

   Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World

   Salam - Science in the Third World

   Seife - Zero

   Weisskopf - The Joy of Insight

   POPULAR

   Deutsch - The Beginning of Infinity (especially his explanation about fungibility in quantum mechanics)

   Feynman - The Meaning of It All

   Feynman - Lectures on Physics

   Feynman and Weinberg - Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics

   Galison - Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps

   Gamow - One, Two, Three... Infinity

   Hadamard - Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field

   Hawking - A Brief History of Time

   Hofstadter - Gödel Escher Bach

   Heisenberg - Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science

   Polya - How to Solve It

   Schrödinger - What is Life?

   Susskind - The Theoretical Minimum

   Susskind - Quantum Mechanics

   Wallace - Everything And More

   Weinberg - The First Three Minutes

   Wiener - God & Golem, Inc.

   TEXTS

   Aaronson - Quantum Computing with Democritus (but I don't have a version with me in the acknowledgements https://books.google.com/books?id=jRGfhSoFx0oC&lpg=PR31&ots=... )

   Abelson and Sussman - SICP

   Abrikosov, Gorkov, and Dzyaloshinski - Methods of Quantum Field Theory in Statistical Physics

   Cohen-Tannoudji - Quantum Mechanics (1+2)

   Dirac - Lectures on Quantum Mechanics

   Eddington - Space, Time, and Gravitation

   Feynman - Feynman's Thesis

   Feynman and Hibbs - Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals

   Fermi - Thermodynamics

   Gattringer & Lang - Quantum Chromodynamics on the Lattice

   Goldstein - Classical Mechanics (the old version, NOT with Poole and Safko)

   Griffiths - Introduction to Electrodynamics

   Griffiths - Introduction to Quantum Mechanics

   Jackson - Classical Electrodynamics (2nd edition---the last one entirely in CGS---is preferable)

   Kleppner and Kolenkow - An Introduction to Mechanics

   Landau and Lifshitz - any book in this series

   Nielsen and Chuang - Quantum Computation and Quantum Information

   Pauli - Selected Topics in Field Quantization

   Peskin & Schroeder - An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory

   Purcell - Electricity and Magnetism

   Ryden - Introduction to Cosmology

   Sakurai - Modern Quantum Mechanics (up to chapter 5, after which Sakurai dies and the editors put his notes together)

   Sussman and Wisdom - Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics

   Sipser - Introduction to the Theory of Computation

   Thorne - Black Holes & Time Warps

   Thouless - The Quantum Mechanics of Many-Body Systems

   Weinberg - The Quantum Theory of Fields I, II, and III

   Zee - Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell

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6. lateadopterMay 2017
   > Like, I haven't found much details about the actual physical experiments around the spin of electrons (and certainly not of other particles).

   The Stern-Gerlach experiment (1922) is what you're looking for. "Modern Quantum Mechanics" by Sakurai opens with an explanation of this experiment and its consequences.

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