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?
• Why is quantum mechanics difficult to understand?
  • Quantum world fundamentally different (intro).
    • Invisible
    • Different properties.
    • Ubiquity.
  • Indirect information: observations.
    • Submicroscopic scale.
    • Macroscopic human senses.
    • Information through interaction.
  • Interaction causes alteration.
    • Observations alter.
    • Environment alters (decoherence).
  • Models predicting observations.
    • Analogies to directly observable systems.
    • Numerical observations require mathematical models.
  • Limitations of non-mathematical descriptions.
    • Limitations of mathematical description.
      • Observers obey QM (Heisenberg cut)
      • Bad data to start (unmeasurable initial conditions)