to make this video I went through a
whole bunch of online resources and
textbooks that I read and enjoyed all
that came highly recommended by others
it took a while but I narrowed it down
to a curriculum that teaches you quantum
mechanics rigorously without too many
mathematical prerequisites and don't
worry I'm not gonna ask you to buy all
these the recommended reading for this
course is either free or cheaply
available hi my name is Madonna and I'm
a PhD student studying quantum computing
but even though I do quantum stuff now
when I first learned about it in
university I hated it and I ended up
switching from physics to maths because
of it
but I had some time off and decided to
give it another go so I read a bunch of
textbooks and realized that quantum
mechanics is actually super super
exciting it's just that the way that you
are introduced to it in the university
usually is kind of rubbish and a lot of
popularization of quantum mechanics are
kind of useless because they just rely
on analogies but there are some good
resources in between and so I made this
video to recommend some of them to you
let's start at a book that I would
recommend to everyone from complete
beginners to physics pros it's volume 3
of the Fineman lectures on physics
standard quantum textbooks start with
the maths of quantum mechanics but find
and recognize that you need to start
with the intuition if you learn the
intuition first it's easier to learn the
maths but the other way around doesn't
really work you might be thinking but
quantum mechanics isn't intuitive and
that's true but a good physicist has
some intuition for it nevertheless and
Fineman was of course very good so we're
very lucky to have these lectures and
even better they're free online the link
as well as what I think are the
essential chapters are in the blog post
linked in the description below
if you don't want to do anymore beyond
this then no problem reading that alone
will give you a very good flavor for
quantum mechanics but if you're willing
to do a little bit more serious study
then it really is possible to learn this
subject to a very high standard on your
own even without a lot of maths
background see the usual approach to
quantum physics uses loads of calculus
and can be a bit intimidating and even
worse it's really opaque so it's hard to
understand what's quantum because it all
just looks like equation manipulation
but the way I'm gonna suggest uses
something called linear algebra instead
which is trust me way easier and
generalizes to things like quantum
computing much better any way to learn
that bath background I recommend a few
selected chapters from Gilbert Strang
introduction to linear algebra some of
you might already know that topic but it
could be worthwhile to do those chapters
anyway because I find that that material
is often not the main emphasis of a
standard linear algebra course and
that's why I started making these videos
about linear algebra here I wanted the
videos to specifically cover what you
need for quantum mechanics so if you're
not sure if you have enough background
watch those videos and see whether you
feel super comfortable with those ideas
already or not
if you decide to get the book then try
buy a secondhand copy of an old edition
it's a really popular textbook so
there's loads of old ones floating about
and there's also free lecture recordings
by the author
anyway that's the maths out of the way
now for quantum textbooks
I'd recommend two the first is the
theoretical minimum by Leonard Susskind
and art Friedman this book is based on a
lecture series that Susskind did for
people who wanted to learn quantum
mechanics who didn't necessarily have a
physics background but it's brilliant
even if you are a physics major because
it includes some helpful discussions
before diving into the maths of each
topic even though it assumes very little
knowledge and looks like a novel don't
be fooled this is a serious textbook
that they're really CLE will teach you
as much quantum stuff as a typical
undergraduate physics degree that's why
I don't recommend to read it on its own
because it goes from basic to probe very
fast try reading it with a modern
approach to quantum mechanics by
Townsend it's one of the few mainstream
introductory quantum textbooks that I
can really get behind it's inspired by
the Fineman lectures as well as one of
my favourite quantum textbooks modern
quantum mechanics by South Korea but
Sakura is basically a graduate textbook
so it's very detailed and the Fineman
lectures are not really detailed enough
so this book captures the core ideas of
both at just the right level
it covers a lot of the same ground as
the theoretical minimum but in a
different way so I think they complement
each other what I found was when I was
learning quantum mechanics it's great to
see the same thing explained multiple
ways so those are the core textbooks
there's a bunch more I have for advanced
topics that you might be interested in
reading after these three or if you've
done quantum mechanics before but I'm
going to talk about them in the blog
post instead of here
how should you use these books though
it's really easy to trick yourself into
thinking that you understand maths or
physics when you just read and reread a
textbook and look at worked out
solutions but as Scott Young explains in
his new book about learning what's
really happening is you start to feel
familiar with the text but that's very
different from understanding it in his
book he gives a whole bunch of different
methods to get around this and other
issues you might get stuck on when
you're learning something on your own
I seriously enjoyed the book so I
decided to uh Scott what tips he'd most
recommend for you guys for this specific
project here's what he said well the
most important thing is to just do a lot
of practice I think that a lot of people
get the idea that the main way that you
learn something like physics is by
attending the lectures and reading the
textbook but I think that the main way
you learn it is actually doing the
practice problems the first reason this
is more effective is something known as
retrieval so retrieval is the idea that
if you actually have to practice
remembering something from your head
you'll be much more likely to retain it
than if you just passively review it
looking over your notes the second
reason is that physics is a skill just
as you wouldn't learn to ride a bicycle
by reading a book on learning to ride a
bicycle but by actually riding a bicycle
similarly if you want to be able to do
physics problems you actually have to do
physics problems quick interruption here
I couldn't agree more with this point
and so in the blog post I've marked what
problems you should be doing with the
texts I recommended including for the
Fineman lectures
so the Fineman technique is a method
that i developed about ten years ago and
it was named after my real inspiration
in learning hard things richard fineman
and so the method is really simple
basically you just take a sheet of paper
and you write down the thing that you
don't understand at the top so it could
be understanding torque or understanding
the infinite well problem in quantum
mechanics and then you go through there
and try to explain the problem to
someone else as if you're teaching it so
the thing that this is really helpful
for is that first of all it takes all of
your thoughts all of your confusions and
puts them on the paper so suddenly when
you have things on the paper you can
sometimes figure out the answer that you
were missing oh this is what I didn't
understand just by putting it on the
page the second reason that this is
valuable is that it allows you to slow
down your process through a particularly
difficult point so a lot of physics is
really confusing and it can just be a
situation where you're like I don't get
it and you throw your hands up and
that's not very helpful because just I
don't get it doesn't really give you any
obvious Road forward whereas if you slow
it down you can start by asking yourself
very specific questions what exactly
don't you understand about it and when
you have very specific questions it's
much easier to look for very specific
answers if you want more helpful tips
about learning from Scott I highly
recommend his book ultra learning the
fireman technique especially resonated
with me because that's how I learned
quantum mechanics I would read textbooks
and then what I felt like I've got it I
would try and explain them in YouTube
videos these YouTube videos and that's
how my channel started the thing is when
you're trying to explain something to
someone there's no hiding what you don't
understand and also when you want to
convey an idea to someone you want to
give them the core intuition and so it
forces you to come up with that core
intuition once you feel like you
understand something try and explain it
but try and explain it without any
jargon or difficult equations what I
found doing this is that it's a lot
harder than it seems like when I would
be going through a textbook I would feel
like I understood everything and I could
follow all the arguments but as soon as
I
to explain it without the mathematics I
realized that I didn't actually know
what was going on underneath the
equations now if any of you do end up
making videos or writing articles or in
general if you just end up doing this
project I would love to hear about it
and so I've finally made a subreddit for
this channel where you can keep me up to
date links for that and everything else
below but now I want to ask you a
question
if you are planning to do any of this
then what's your motivation what do you
want to learn and also what do you
foresee as the biggest stumbling blocks
let me know in the comments below and
I'll try and update the blog post to
address those ok thanks for watching