Quantum physics made relatively simple: Three lectures by Hans Bethe | Hacker News Reader

Quantum physics made relatively simple: Three lectures by Hans Bethe

bethe.cornell.edu

127 pointsdavidroberts20 comments

Before you invest three hours to watch these lectures you should know that the title is terribly misleading. These lectures are not about QM at all, they are about the history of QM, albeit told by someone who was actually part of it. But the coolness of hearing the history of QM firsthand is undermined by the fact that Bethe is clearly well past his prime, and he's not particularly good at telling stories.

If you want a video that is true to this title I'd recommend this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rqd8Oa-sA4

EDIT: And if you want to really understand QM, there's this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc

:-)

Thank you for sharing these links. I've bookmarked the second one and watched through the first.

My first thought is the first link has left me with more questions than answers, but I suppose that might just be the nature of QM.

I think it was Richard Feynman that once wrote: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics"

If it wasn't him, then he certainly said something akin to that (there's a number of similar remarks made by a number of different physicists)

I think the first link is more a pop science show than real depth...this is a much better series from feynmen(unfortunately its really long):

1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLQ2atfqk2c

2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMSgE62S6oo

3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNNXD7fuE5E

4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UigjOJm6F9o

Fantastic. Feynman is the most amazing scientist possible - enlightening and (seemingly) approachable, yet still a genius. I can only hope that there will be more like him in the future.

Wow, what a find! These are well worth sitting through, but if you don't want to invest four hours, the content of these videos is in Feynman's book "QED". But if you're ever going to spend four hours watching QM lectures, make it these.

(unfortunately its really long)

NOT "unfortunately". Thanks for the links. I have the entire Feynman Lectures on Physics series but have never actually heard his voice.

Not entirely. QM is puzzling, but not as bad as most popularizations lead you to believe. That's why I added the second link.

Here's a paper that the second link is based on in case you don't want to sit through the video:

http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf

Also, the Open Yale Organic Chemistry lectures with J. Michael McBride explain quantum physics in a straightforward and practical way without all the usual mysticism and "this is not possible to understand".

http://oyc.yale.edu/chemistry/chem-125a

Not quantum physics, but if you want to read a real classic, there's also Weyl's Space-Time-Matter, which is mind-blowing in its lucidity and ambition (unifying GR and electromagnetism): http://archive.org/details/spacetimematter00weyluoft.

Well, while I started, why not add a list of freely available physics books online from PSE: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6157/list-of-free....

It's amazing that you can pretty much get up to PhD level education using these books (you should buy Landau's books, though, unfortunately those are not free).

If you're interested in watching Physics lectures online, don't miss Susskind's excellent series of lectures from Stanford.

http://www.lecture-notes.co.uk/susskind/

Yes the Quantum Entanglements series is what I watched.

It's actually built for a non-student audience (interested professionals etc) so I think you can follow it fairly well even if your background isn't in math/physics (it's not easy though)

If you really want to have a good (but easy) introduction to quantum mechanics (and quantum information) I recommend http://www.amazon.com/Six-Quantum-Pieces-Course-Physics/dp/9... - it requires nothing more than some linear algebra.

(As a side note, I'm trying to make a computer game of quantum mechanics, to make people learn by playing.)

Don't forget to check out his other lecture series "General Relativity Made Quantumly Simple".

Quantum tic-tac-toe is an engaging way to get a feel for superpositions and cyclic entanglements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tic-tac-toe

apple quicktime....

Yes. Sad to say.

Direct links:

http://bethe.cornell.edu/media/intro_large.mov

http://bethe.cornell.edu/media/lecture_1_large.mov

http://bethe.cornell.edu/media/lecture_2_large.mov

http://bethe.cornell.edu/media/lecture_3_large.mov

http://bethe.cornell.edu/media/outro_large.mov

Thanks, saved me a lot of time.

thanks.

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