Product Description

Quantum theory confronts us with bizarre paradoxes which contradict the logic of classical physics. At the subatomic level, one particle seems to know what the others are doing, and according to Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle", there is a limit on how accurately nature can be observed. And yet the theory is amazingly accurate and widely applied, explaining all of chemistry and most of physics. "Introducing Quantum Theory" takes us on a step-by-step tour with the key figures, including Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrodinger. Each contributed at least one crucial concept to the theory. The puzzle of the wave-particle duality is here, along with descriptions of the two questions raised against Bohr's "Copenhagen Interpretation" - the famous "dead and alive cat" and the EPR paradox. Both remain unresolved.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28726 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
J.P. McEvoy is a former research scientist and now a science journalist. Oscar Zarate is a highly acclaimed graphic artist who has illustrated many Introducing titles. His prize-winning graphic novel A Small Killing is known throughout the world.

Customer Reviews

Some background needed, good introduction to personalities
I thought this book was excellent, and a fun read. I enjoy the format of the "Introducing..." series in general, i.e. the "serious" Graphic Novel. You will need a fairly extensive chemistry/physics background to get the most out of this book, and should be familiar with concepts of classical physics, wave vs. particle behaviours, etc. But even if you're a bit rusty, as I was, I thought it was very interesting putting names and (silly) faces to the founding fathers of Quantum mechanics and going through the history of each of their contributions.

Brilliant!
This book is in the 'Introducing ...' series of 'comic books'. It's excellent. Perhaps the best thing about it is the structured way in which it describes the development of quantum theory. After being introduced to the key scientists, the reader is told about the nineteenth century developments from which quantum theory arose. It emerges that there were three problems facing classical physics around the year 1900. These were solved by Max Planck, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr respectively and, in the process, quantum theory was born. The author deals with these problems and their solutions in detail. I found this to be a very clear approach, which seemed to lay things out in chronological order with everything fitting in to place.

After this the author goes on to describe the further work of Niels Bohr as well as that of Wolfgang Pauli, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger and Paul Dirac. Schrodinger's cat and wave-particle duality are described along the way, the theory of QED gets mentioned but is not described, and the book culminates in an account of the EPR paradox, Bell's inequality theorem and the work of Alain Aspect.

Having said all that, this is not an easy book. I don't think it would be possible to write an easy introduction to quantum theory. I had to read it a few times to understand it (and there are still quite a few pages I don't understand), but I learned a lot in the process. There is an amazing amount of information packed into this book and even someone who is scientifically knowledgable would benefit from it. If you know nothing or little about quantum theory, you're not going to find an easier introduction or one so well organised, and even if you only understand half of the book, you'll learn a great deal.

An excellent intro
This is the first book I've read in the "Introducing" series; I thoroughly enjoyed it. The topic of Quantum Physics is something I've always had a layman's interest in, and this book managed to pull together the little bits I knew into an overall picture.

The comic style format is light-hearted but doesn't detract from the overall content.

One criticism if I can is that some of the mathematical formulaes left me baffled, and I have a Maths degree! However the accompanying narrative generally explained some of the "hard sums".