Quantum Physics: A Fundamental Approach to Modern Physics

About this book

This brilliantly innovative textbook is intended as a first introduction to quantum mechanics and its applications This brilliantly innovative textbook is intended as a first introduction to quantum mechanics and its applications. Townsends new text shuns the historical ordering that characterizes so-called Modern Physics textbooks and applies a truly modern approach to this subject starting instead with contemporary single-photon and single-atom interference experiments. The text progresses naturally from a thorough introduction to wave mechanics through applications of quantum mechanics to solid-state nuclear and particle physics thereby including most of the topics normally presented in a Modern Physics course. Examples of topics include blackbody radiation Bose-Einstein condensation the band-structure of solids and the silicon revolution the curve of binding energy and nuclear fission and fusion and the Standard Model of particle physics. Students can see in quantum mechanics a common thread that ties these topics into a coherent picture of how the world works a picture that gives students confidence that quantum mechanics really works too. The book also includes a chapter-length appendix on special relativity for the benefit of students who have not had a previous exposure to this subject.Translation into Chinese.