Sakurai as a first course in QM

[capandbells]

I'm a junior undergraduate who has yet to take quantum mechanics, although I did have a brief introduction to basic wave mechanics (square well, harmonic oscillator, tunneling, the hydrogen atom, etc.) in "modern physics" course. I've also watched and taken notes from the Quantum Mechanics lectures from Oxford that have been posted on iTunes, and found I understood them reasonably well. I checked Sakurai's book out from the library and have been going through the first two chapters, and I am having no difficulty in understanding it.
I am considering asking my department if I could do an independent study with Sakurai's book in lieu of the introductory quantum mechanics course, which I think uses Griffiths or Liboff. Does this seem like a reasonable idea? Would I be missing anything terribly important? Should I just bite the bullet and take the other course?

 

[jtbell]

I am considering asking my department if I could do an independent study with Sakurai's book in lieu of the introductory quantum mechanics course, which I think uses Griffiths or Liboff.

It doesn't hurt to ask, of course, and different schools are likely to have different policies on this sort of thing. Here, we generally don't allow students to substitute an independent study for a catalog-listed course on the same subject, unless there is no way they can fit the official course into their schedule without postponing their graduation.

 

[twofish-quant]

I am considering asking my department if I could do an independent study with Sakurai's book in lieu of the introductory quantum mechanics course, which I think uses Griffiths or Liboff. Does this seem like a reasonable idea? Would I be missing anything terribly important? Should I just bite the bullet and take the other course?

Sakurai is usually considered a graduate level course so if your university offers graduate level QM, you might want to consider taking that. Universities tend to make it difficult to do independent study, so you can ask, but the answer will probably be no, in which case, you can take the undergraduate course and the read Sakurai on the side.

 

[FroChro]

I checked Sakurai's book out from the library and have been going through the first two chapters, and I am having no difficulty in understanding it.

I don't remember Sakurai's book (modern quantum mechanics) very well and I have gone just through part of it, but from what i do remember I advise you to not judge the whole book from first 2 (or even 3) chapters. That book was finished after author's death and I think it reflected on the content quite negatively. Though I may be biased as I had to be reading it in quite a hurry.

 

[G01]

I don't remember Sakurai's book (modern quantum mechanics) very well and I have gone just through part of it, but from what i do remember I advise you to not judge the whole book from first 2 (or even 3) chapters. That book was finished after author's death and I think it reflected on the content quite negatively. Though I may be biased as I had to be reading it in quite a hurry.

I think the first 4 chapters are great, and I had no problems with Chapter 7 on identical particles.

However, the chapters on scattering and time independent perturbation theory were much harder to read. You could tell Sakurai did not write them all himself. Overall the book is good and I think it's worth reading the 5 good chapters and the sections on Time dependent perturbation theory. However, be aware that other parts of the book are extremely trying at times.

 

[cmos]

If you truly have no problem understanding and following Sakurai, then definitely go with that. The undergrad books (e.g. Grifiths) are great for introducing basic results and phenomena, but don't necessarily do quantum the "right way" (e.g. invoking the full power of Dirac notation and actually deriving the Schrödinger equation). One caveat though; Sakurai has, as an appendix, a summary (equations w/o proof or much discussion) of elementary solutions of the Schrödinger equation. You should be able to derive all of those equations without much problem. If you cannot, then I would suggest an undergrad book as a supplement for those solutions.