User:Johnjbarton/sandbox/introduction to quantum mechanics

This is not a Wikipedia article: It is an individual user's work-in-progress page, and may be incomplete and/or unreliable. New content for Introduction to quantum mechanics. Status: first draft.

Topic list

• What is quantum mechanics?
  • A curiously exotic set of phenomena.
  • theoretical model of very very tiny things.
  • Major part of how the universe works.
  • strangely: all of the above.
• Why is quantum mechanics difficult to understand?
  • Quantum world fundamentally different (intro).
    • Invisible, Heavily mathematical, Ubiquity, Different properties.
  • Invisible leads to indirect observations.
    • Indirect information: observations.
    • Submicroscopic scale.
    • Macroscopic human senses.
    • Information through interaction.
    • Interaction causes alteration:
      • Observations alter state.
      • Environment alters (decoherence).
  • Indirect information leads to models leads to math.
    • Models predicting observations.
    • Numerical observations require mathematical models.
  • Limitations of non-mathematical descriptions.
    • Models difficult to explain without math background.
    • Only analogies to directly observable systems.
  • Limitations of mathematical description.
    • Bad data to start (unmeasurable initial conditions)
    • Observers obey QM (Heisenberg cut)