Supplemental Reading for Physics 008: The Quantum World Around Us

You will find the following books to be interesting supplements to this course if you are interested in reading more about quantum mechanics. Thanks go to Prof. Daniel Styer of Oberlin College for most of the comments about these books.

• N. D. Mermin, Is the moon there when nobody looks? Reality and the quantum Theory, Physics Today, April, 1985, p. 38. This is the best treatment of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox.
• R. P. Feynman, Character of the Physical Law (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1965). This book contains a transcript of a famous lecture by the same name that Feynman delivered at Cornell University in 1964. You will see clips of this in the last day of class.
• J. M. Jauch, Are Quanta Real? (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1973) This book, and the following three, are popularizations of quantum mechanics. The models used in these books are different from the ones we use in class.
• John Gribbin, In Search of Schroedinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality (Bantum, New York, 1984). Describes both quantum mechanics and its history.
• J. C. Polkinghorne, The Quantum World (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1984). Written by a physicist turned priest. He tends to hide behind mathematics.
• Alastair Rae, Quantum Physics: Illusion or Reality? (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1986). As Styer describes this book, it contains six errors on the first three pages, but then improves.
• George Gamow, Mr. Tompkins in Paperback(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1965). This is a compilation of articles by Gamow who is a famous physicist that wrote many popularizations of science. It covers some fields in addition to quantum mechanics. One of the Sci. Am. articles that you will read also appears here.
• Robert Gilmore, Alice in Quantumland: an allegory in quantum physics (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1995). Lewis Carroll's character, Alice, has much more in store for her when she travels into the quantum world, than she saw when she ventured through the looking glass. This book has a nice collection of simple descriptions of quantum phenomena.

The following books and articles are pieces of literature that have quantum mechanics playing a large role in them (similar to Stoppard's Hapgood). Be cautioned however that some of these authors get the physics wrong.

• Robert Anton Wilson, Schroedinger's Cat (Simon and Shuster, New York, 1979). A strange science fiction novel.
• Arthur C. Clarke, Fountains of Paradise (1979). Clarke predicts the discovery of carbon nanotubes in this work (he calls it diamond wire) and uses it to build a "skyhook" in this Hugo Award winning science fiction novel.
• Eric Kraft, Where do you stop? (Crown, New York, 1992). In one of the continuing stories of Peter Leroy, Kraft desribes quantum mechanics from the point of view of a middle school student. The main theme is on racial equality in small-town America, though.
• Jane Hamilton, When I began to understand quantum mechanics Harpers, 279 (August, 1989) p. 41. A short story involving quantum physics and a beauty pageant.
• June Jordan, Poem on quantum mechanics of breakfast with Haruko The Nation, 257 (5 July, 1993) p. 40. A love poem.
• Susan Strehle, Fiction in the Quantum Universe (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1992).

Jim Freericks, Professor of Physics,