Quantum Physics

Instructor: Mark Taylor

Office: Gerstacker 118
Phone: 569-5241
email:   taylormp@hiram.edu

Office Hours:

MWF 4:15-6:30, Tues. 1:00-5:00, Thurs. 9:00-12:00, Sun. 3:00-6:00

Physics Study Session:

Thursday evening 6:30-9:30 in Gerstacker 123.

Meeting Times:

MWF 8:30-9:50; Colton 15

Textbook:

Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, 2nd edition, by David Griffiths

Course Overview:

Quantum mechanics is the basic theory that embodies our understanding of the microscopic world.  As we saw in Physics 320, the theory was born out of a diverse set of experimental results that were incompatible with a classical mechanics interpretation.  Thus far your exposure to quantum theory has been in the form of wave-mechanics via Schrodinger’s equation.  This approach is certainly useful for many calculations and we will make extensive use of it in this course.  Unfortunately, that messy partial differential equation Hψ=Eψ tends to obscure a much simpler underlying formal theory.  We will devote some time to developing this more formal theory in which particle states are represented by vectors in a Hilbert space and observables are represented by Hermitian operators.  These formal operator methods can be extremely powerful as we will see when we treat the harmonic oscillator and angular momentum.  Despite Feynman’s famous quip that “nobody understands quantum mechanics”, we’ll do our best to figure some of it out.  Of course the “true” meaning of it all is still open to debate and we’ll explore some of these issues of “quantum reality” at the end of the course.

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