Intro to Quantum Mechanics Books

[quasar987]

What are the best intro to QM books out there? Hopefully we'll use Griffiths for the class next semester, but if I want to have other references, what should they be?

 

[Galileo]

Griffith's is good to start with. Lots of exercises (be sure to do them).
After you've come familiar with the basic concepts you might want switch to Cohen-Tannoudji and Sakurai (highly recommended).

 

[Bladibla]

oops. WRong one..

 

[dextercioby]

You might like Feynman's style.So read the III-rd volume of its lectures as well.

Daniel.

 

[quasar987]

I've taken a note about Cohen-Tannoudji and Sakurai but they are said to be for the graduate level. What are alternatives to Griffiths?

Feynman, good idea. Sometimes, he puts things in a much more clearer light than everyone else. Sometimes it's the opposite

 

[dextercioby]

Trust me,it's an awesome book.Marlon kept reccomending Bransden & Joachain's "Intro to QM" book.I didn't know QM at all the last time i checked it,however.

Schiff's 1947 edition looks elementary to me.

Daniel.

 

[Dracovich]

Hoping to read griffiths this summer although i won't really have a chance to do the examples :/ Won't have any quantum classes until my first block next september, so i was hoping to get some quick intro to it before starting it officially (and I'm currently reading Griffiths EM books of which i think is the best book I've had so far so I'm looking forward to reading it).

 

[dextercioby]

Also Blokhintsev's book is introductory in the subject,as well.I hope the Americans translated it.

Actually many old books are on an intro level.Excepting Dirac,von Neumann,Weyl & Wigner.And van der Waerden.

Daniel.

 

[zhongsan]

Dirac is extremely beautiful.

 

[zeronem]

I have David Bohm's "Quantum Theory". I havn't got to reading it yet, but I was overlooking the structure of it, and it looks like a fine read. It's a Dover Publicated book.

 

[quasar987]

Turns out we'll be using 'Gasiorowicz' book. How's this one for an introduction to QM?

 

[quasar987]

According to the on Amazon, the book really stinks as an introduction. Apparently, it fails to tie up the different pieces together properly. So since the physics library at my sucky uni sucks (I love that school!) and have almost no QM books, I'm thinking of buying another book that does very well where Gasiorowicz is deficient.

Will Griffiths do the job? How about Liboff? Shankar?

 

[Norman]

It depends on why Gasiorowicz is deficient... I really couldn't understand exactly what is missing from the book from the reviews. Anyways, Shankar has a very thorough introduction to the math needed in QM in its first 100 pages. While I haven't looked at Liboff, Griffiths is ok. It is slowly paced, but I think it jumps a bit and slightly fails to show how things are tied together. The notation Griffiths uses is very odd at times and might become confusing- pretty standard for beginning students though.
Good luck with QM (I have been taking at least one class in QM or QFT for the last 6 semesters, and I am taking another QFT class next semester. So I have seen a bit of the stuff.)
Cheers,
Norman