Book reviews from kneipe_jhansen

Quantum Mechanics

by Eugen Merzbacher

Many of the reviews on other sites complain that this book is not good at helping students understand quantum mechanics. First of all, this is not an introductory text. It is assumed that you have already had a good course on introductory quantum mechanics, and that you understood a large portion of that class. This is a graduate level textbook, or advanced undergraduate text. You will need a good background in calculus, differential equations and solving BVPs and PDEs using Fourier transforms among other (simpler) methods. With that said, this is an excellent textbook on quantum mechanics. It covers adequately many topics that will help students of both physical chemistry, chemical physics, engineering and physics. The first half of this book covers the basic foundations that any student of the physical sciences should know. The second half delves into topics that will be of selected interest, and give a good brief introduction to these areas-QFT, scattering, and many-body perturbation theory to name a few. I am giving this four stars because of the readability of the book. It is not horrible, but it is written and reads like most scientists sound when they give talks-a bit dry. Other than that, the problems to work out, the examples given are all wonderful at helping to elucidate quantum mechanics even more.