Inside utter strangeness

摘要

It is all too easy to compound the perplexities of quantum mechanics. Monographs are often weighed down by abstruse mathematics; other treatments struggle to separate physics from formalism. The problem is to communicate the subject's intrinsic strangeness without burdensome mathematical demands - but also without resorting to gee-whiz platitudes that assert, but do not explain, the incongruities between the quantum world and everyday experience. Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman's Quantum Mechanics is the second entry in Susskind's Theoretical Minimum series, based on an Internet course of the same name and designed to satisfy a mathematically literate audience looking for more detail than can be found in a popular-science offering. The authors set their aims at the outset: "the goal", they say, "is not to hide the utter strangeness of quantum logic but to bring it out into the light of day".