Struggling with exercises after reading quantum mechanics textbook

[rb120134]

I just finished my three year bachelor degree in physics with an overall average grade of 7.4 on all courses. In september I will be starting my 2 year masters degree at University. I am reading through modern quantum mechanics third edition of J.J Sakurai and Napolitano. However, I do find I struggle with about 50% of the exercises after each chapter. Do you guys have any tips on this? Like I get the stuff that is explained in the chapter, but some of the exercises seem pretty tricky and the solution not straightforward, how to deal with this?

 

[PeroK]

I just finished my three year bachelor degree in physics with an overall average grade of 7.4 on all courses. In september I will be starting my 2 year masters degree at University. I am reading through modern quantum mechanics third edition of J.J Sakurai and Napolitano. However, I do find I struggle with about 50% of the exercises after each chapter. Do you guys have any tips on this? Like I get the stuff that is explained in the chapter, but some of the exercises seem pretty tricky and the solution not straightforward, how to deal with this?

You'll need to be more specific about the exercises you can't do. It's years since I studied that book, but I don't remember the exercises being especially tricky.

You could post a couple of examples in the Advanced Physics Homework forum.

 

[TensorCalculus]

I just finished my three year bachelor degree in physics with an overall average grade of 7.4 on all courses. In september I will be starting my 2 year masters degree at University. I am reading through modern quantum mechanics third edition of J.J Sakurai and Napolitano. However, I do find I struggle with about 50% of the exercises after each chapter. Do you guys have any tips on this? Like I get the stuff that is explained in the chapter, but some of the exercises seem pretty tricky and the solution not straightforward, how to deal with this?

The sorts of textbook exercises that I struggle on are definitely more basic (and therefore all of the advice I provide may not be applicable to you since it is from my own experience), but something that I have found is generally very useful and hopefully will be applicable to you is to find example problems and solutions which are similar (but not too similar!) To the problem at hand. That way you have an idea of how one might approach a similar problem, and that can help you with finding the right approach to the problem you are currently struggling on.
And then there's also the usual advice which I will reiterate and reemphasise which is that the more you practice problems the better you will get at spotting patterns between problems and the better you will get at problem solving. Building up from more simple problems (e.g. application based problems where you just have to rearrange and apply a formula) to more difficult problems which combine concepts slowly and progressively did well for me and maybe give it a shot, it might do well for you too.