The infamous boundary : seven decades of controversy in quantum physics
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The infamous boundary : seven decades of controversy in quantum physics
Birkhauser, 1995
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-244)
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
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ISBN 9780817637859
Description
reprinted in the British trade journal Physics World in 1990, three separate and 5 lengthy replies from establishment physicists were printed in subsequent issues. For outsiders, especially scientists who rely on physicist's theories in their own fields, this situation is disquieting. Moreover, many recall their introduction to quantum mechanics as a startling, if not shocking, experience. A molecular biologist related how he had started in theoretical physics but, after hearing the ideology of quantum mechanics, marched straight to the Reg istrar's office and switched fields. A colleague recalled how her undergraduate chemistry professor religiously entertained queries from the class - until one day he began with the words: "No questions will be permitted on today's lecture." The topic, of course, was quantum mechanics. My father, an organic chemist at a Midwestern university, also had to give that dreaded annual lecture. Around age 16, I picked up a little book he used to prepare and was perplexed by the author's tone, which seemed apologetic to the point of pleading. It was my first brush with the quantum theory. 6 Eventually, I went to graduate school in physics. By then I had acquired an historical bent, which developed out of an episode in my freshman year in college. To relieve the tedium of the introductory physics course, I set out to understand Einstein's theory of relativity (the so-called Special Theory of 1905, not the later and more difficult General Theory of 1915). This went badly at first.
Table of Contents
Prologue I: Atoms.- Prologue II: Quanta.- Revolution, Part I: Heisenberg's Matrices.- Revolution, Part II: Schroedinger's Waves.- Uncertainty.- Complementarity.- The Debate Begins.- The Impossibility Theorem.- EPR.- The Post-War Heresies.- Bell's Theorem.- Dice Games and Conspiracies.- Testing Bell.- Loopholes.- The Impossible Observed.- Paradoxes.- Philosophies.- Principles.- Opinions.- Speculations.- Postscript.- Appendix by William Faris.
- Volume
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ISBN 9783764337858
Description
Quantum mechanics is a model of the physical world that physicists of high repute rejected for over 50 years, but that is now accepted by most physicists as the basis of their science. In this work, the author gives an historical account of the topic.
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