Best Intro to Quantum Mechanics: Griffiths vs Dirac

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The discussion centers on the best introductory textbooks for quantum mechanics (QM), focusing on Griffiths and Dirac. Griffiths is popular for its clarity and self-study suitability, though some criticize it for being too casual and lacking rigor. Dirac, while historically significant, is generally not recommended for beginners due to its complexity. Other notable mentions include Sakurai, Shankar, and Zettili, each offering different strengths in teaching QM concepts. Ultimately, many contributors suggest using multiple texts to cover both foundational and advanced topics effectively.
  • #31
WannabeNewton said:
It's in the extended edition DVD; it doesn't show up in the regular version of the movie. Have fun with Shankar!

I intend to :cool:
 
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  • #32
I'm going to admit my age on this one, but here are some texts that I really like, but I'll warn you, they are all out of print:

McGervey, more modern physics that QM, but never the less a decent text.
Slater, Quantum Theory of Matter, every time I read that book I learn something else.
Schiff, another I one am not seeing mentioned.

Now, these texts are not filled with bra-ket notation, but I didn't learn that until late in my graduate career.
 
  • #33
Well, I also like the older texts, e.g., Pauli's famous review on wave mechanics, Sommerfeld's "Atombau und Spektrallinien", Landau/Lifgarbagez Vol. 3 and so on. However, I'd not recommend to learn quantum mechanics from a text that overemphasizes wave mechanics and then within wave mechanics the time-independent Schrödinger equation. The abstract formalism is more appropriate to understand the structure of quantum theory and doesn't overemphasize the position representation and the wave aspects. In my experience, many students come to the wrong conclusion that only energy eigenstates have some physical meaning. Also scattering theory is often taught in the time-independent scheme from the very beginning, although it's much better to start from a time-dependent approach, using proper wave packets as incoming states rather than plane waves, which are not even states in the strict sense at all.

A lot of confusion can be avoided by starting with the Hilbert-space structure. However, of course, you must start with some intuitive picture, why one has to use this abstract formalism. I think, Sakurai does this in a very nice way.
 

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