Reddit Reddit reviews In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality

We found 21 Reddit comments about In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Science & Math
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History & Philosophy of Science
In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality
4x8 inches 302 pages
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21 Reddit comments about In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality:

u/luminiferousethan_ · 3 pointsr/askscience

Quantum Mechanics is not really a subject that can be summed up in a reddit comment. The best way to learn about something is to read about it. Go to your local book shop or library and look for some books on the subject. I've read dozens of books on the subatomic and I still don't understand it fully. If you're aspiring to be a physicist, you should become reeeeeally familiar with reading.

Uncertainty is a good one that I've read. And another great one is In Search of Schrodinger's Cat

u/eek04 · 3 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion

If you want things that "click" for quantum mechanics, the following three popular books were helpful to me (as a layperson):

  • John Gribbin's two books In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality (1984) and Schrodinger's Kittens: And The Search For Reality (1995). These cover several different interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, and many perspectives.
  • Richard Feyman's QED (1985). This (while not being explicit about it) is rooted in the multiple worlds interpretation (which supposedly fits with Feynman's favorite formalism.)

    I know QED have been recommended to people that "know the math" but can't make it click.

    I'm sure there exists newer popular books that would also be helpful; I'm just not familiar with them.
u/T-HO-THA-MALE-HOOKER · 3 pointsr/PKA

i am reading these two books, http://www.amazon.com/In-Search-Schr%C3%B6dingers-Cat-Quantum/dp/0553342533 and http://www.amazon.com/Erwin-Schrodinger-Quantum-Revolution-Gribbin/dp/1118299264. i just ordered this book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983358931/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1KIF2Y9A1PQYE) like 3 days ago and am gonna start reading it soon. also i started playing wow in early sept so i will skim the official mop strat guide just as some extra help once in a while. in school we just finished catcher in the rye and its pretty cool and mind altering.

u/nitrogentriiodide · 3 pointsr/askscience

I know this isn't what you requested, but as a high schooler, I enjoyed In Search of Schödinger's Cat.

The top level presentations on QM are very light on math, and anything below that brings out heavy linear algebra, differential equations, calculus, etc. So you've probably got that top level covered, and now you need to start solving problems. You could get credit for your efforts by picking one of the undergrad versions of QM from the Chemistry and/or the Physics depts.

I took the chemistry route, so we used Atkins, Cohen-Tanoudji, etc. For all the classes that I took and TA'd, the professor might recommend a book, but rarely reference it.

u/bovisrex · 3 pointsr/books

A physics-guru friend of mine recommends this three-pronged punch: In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, The Tao of Physics, and Autobiography of a Yogi. Haven't gotten to the third one yet myself, but the first two were quite excellent.

u/lajoi · 3 pointsr/books

In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin is a good one. A little older, but he walks through arguments really well. He wrote a follow-up book title In Search of Schrodinger's Kittens, but I haven't read that one.

u/doctorwaffle · 2 pointsr/books

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, by John Gribbin. It's an overview of quantum mechanics. It's quite mind-blowing and informative.

u/mariox19 · 2 pointsr/books

This is an older book that I read almost 25 years ago, so I'm not sure how it holds up, but I remember really enjoying In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality. I'm by no means a science person, but I remember that I was really into the book, and if I concentrated on what I was reading in it, I felt like I really understood it. It's good writing.

Maybe someone else on here has read it and can chime in, otherwise you'll have to read the reviews on Amazon and make a judgement call. I will say that I enjoyed it far more than A Brief History of Time.

u/homegrownunknown · 2 pointsr/chemistry

I love science books. These are all on my bookshelf/around my apt. They aren't all chemistry, but they appeal to my science senses:

I got a coffee table book once as a gift. It's Theodore Gray's The Elements. It's beautiful, but like I said, more of a coffee table book. It's got a ton of very cool info about each atom though.

I tried The Immortal Life of Henrieta Lacks, which is all about the people and family behind HeLa cells. That was a big hit, but I didn't care for it.

I liked The Emperor of all Maladies which took a long time to read, but was super cool. It's essentially a biography of cancer. (Actually I think that's it's subtitle)

The Wizard of Quarks and Alice in Quantumland are both super cute allegories relating to partical physics and quantum physics respectively. I liked them both, though they felt low-level, tying them to high-level physics resulted in a fun read.

Unscientific America I bought on a whim and didn't really enjoy since it wasn't science enough.

The Ghost Map was a suuuper fun read about Cholera. I love reading about mass-epidemics and plague.

The Bell that Rings Light, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Schrödinger's Kittens, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Beyond the God Particle are all pleasure reading books that are really primers on Quantum.

I also tend to like anything by Mary Roach, which isn't necessarily chemistry or science, but is amusing and feels informative. I started with Stiff but she has a few others that I also enjoyed.

Have fun!

u/kouhoutek · 1 pointr/askscience

It is probably a little below what you are looking for, and it is coming up on being 30 years old, but In Search of Schrödinger's Cat is a really good place to start for entry level quantum physics.

u/jello_aka_aron · 1 pointr/books

John Gribbin is a favorite science author of mine. In Search of Schrödinger's Cat is a cornerstone for understanding quantum physics as a layman and the follow-up Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality is also very good.

Michio Kaku is another good one. Rudy Rucker's nonfiction is definitely worth a look.

Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age is a pretty awesome account of the lab that pretty much single-handedly invented the modern computer age.

And lastly (offhand) there's nothing better than The Structure of Scientific Revolutions for a view on how our notions of what the Big Ideas are in science change.

u/gristc · 1 pointr/atheism

I liked In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin. I had read A Brief History first, then this and then I read I Brief History again and found I understood it a lot better.

u/Lost7176 · 1 pointr/HardcoreSMP

I just wrote a super long response and accidentally the tab and whole textbox. Anyway, it consisted of a few points,

  1. being that, as far as I understand it, quantum fluctuations suggest that what we previously thought of as "empty space" is actually filled with subatomic particles coming in and out of existence, and in light of this, it is possible to imagine that, however unusual, the big bang could have spontaneously come from nothing and will return thereto eventually.

  2. Continuing with the "cone" analogy (that our universe is a 4 dimensional object, analagous to a 3 dimensional cone, and that we are experiencing 3 dimensional transects along a 4th dimension of time, analogous to a 2 dimensional planar transect traveling along the 3rd dimension of height), you can't talk about something "before" our universe, because the very notion of time is a property of our universe. It's like asking "what is the height of point X outside the cone," when the very notion of height applies only within the cone object. We can imagine that such a point exists, but by virtue of its definition we can't know what it is, otherwise it would be part of our universe.

  3. As I see it, the first atom probably emerged from a primordial soup of subatomic particles, but where those subatomic particles emerged from is still a big question. As mentioned, I suspect quantum fluctuation, I think that there's always some activity of particles coming and going out of existence, with statistics favoring small particles/energy levels over very short periods of time. Of course the chances of such a big bang mess of particles emerging spontaneously would therefore be be infinitesimally small, but in an infinite span of multidimensional possibilities, perhaps it was inevitable that such an unlikely event would happen somehow and since only under those circumstances could a conscious 3 dimensional brain come to exist, so we find ourselves in the unlikeliest of circumstances - and it could be no other way (else we would not be here to marvel at it).

    I'm still drunk, probably moreso than before, but I hope at least some of this makes sense. I have no authority in any aspect of physics, but I do enjoy reading and thinking about the nature of our existence. Two books - Flatland and In Search of Schrödinger's Cat have probably had an undue impact on my beliefs and theories. But fuck it, this is a minecraft server subreddit and I can ramble about half-baked cosmological perspectives if I feel like it.
u/The_Kitten_Stimpy · 1 pointr/Physics

I reallt hopoe you have a decent background in and love of studying math. Live it and love it. If you have that and the curiosity to ask the questions above you are getting ready for one cool academic 'trip' when you advance beyone high school. That said go an buy 'In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality" by John Gribbon it addresses almost exactly what you are asking. It is completely in layman's terms. I have been reading this over and over for at least 17 years and get a little closer, understand a little more each time. Link

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/AskReddit

As far as science for the masses books go, I've found the following two to be awesome.

The sleepwalkers, from Arthur Koestler: History of science from start of history to Newton. Reads like a novel, and the story of how we arrived to newtonian physics and philosophy is a must know. Or how do we arrived to the scientific method, either.

In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, from John Gribbin: I'm finishing this one, and I'm absolutely loving it. It picks up from Newton to explain quantum mechanics in almost the same reading style. Quantum mechanics is far broader than relativistic theory, and its impact has changed everything.

Read this two, and be enlightened.

u/mefansandfreaks · 1 pointr/AskReddit

You might want to read a book like "In Search Of Schrodinger's Cat" by John Gribbin

u/airshowfan · 1 pointr/askscience

Oh good! It's even more BS-ey than I had realized!

My knowledge of quantum physics is limited to what one can learn from popular books (1, 2, 3 ). Could you try to explain the differences between the underlying models/assumptions on which Orch-OR is based, and the models/assumptions in established/standard physics? I would appreciate it.

u/proffrobot · 1 pointr/AskPhysics

It's great that you want to study particle physics and String Theory! It's a really interesting subject. Getting a degree in physics can often make you a useful person so long as you make sure you get some transferable skills (like programming and whatnot). I'll reiterate the standard advice for going further in physics, and in particular in theoretical physics, in the hope that you will take it to heart. Only go into theoretical physics if you really enjoy it. Do it for no other reason. If you want to become a professor, there are other areas of physics which are far easier to accomplish that in. If you want to be famous, become an actor or a writer or go into science communication and become the new Bill Nye. I'm not saying the only reason to do it is if you're obsessed with it, but you've got to really enjoy it and find it fulfilling for it's own sake as the likelihood of becoming a professor in it is so slim. Then, if your academic dreams don't work out, you won't regret the time you spent, and you'll always have the drive to keep learning and doing more, whatever happens to you academically.

With that out of the way, the biggest chunk of learning you'll do as a theorist is math. A decent book (which I used in my undergraduate degree) which covers the majority of the math you need to understand basic physics, e.g. Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, Thermodynamics, Statistical Mechanics and Electromagnetism. Is this guy: Maths It's not a textbook you can read cover to cover, but it's a really good reference, and undoubtably, should you go and do a physics degree, you'll end up owning something like it. If you like maths now and want to learn more of it, then it's a good book to do it with.

The rest of the books I'll recommend to you have a minimal number of equations, but explain a lot of concepts and other interesting goodies. To really understand the subjects you need textbooks, but you need the math to understand them first and it's unlikely you're there yet. If you want textbook suggestions let me know, but if you haven't read the books below they're good anyway.

First, particle physics. This book Deep Down Things is a really great book about the history and ideas behind modern particles physics and the standard model. I can't recommend it enough.

Next, General Relativity. If you're interested in String Theory you're going to need to become an expert in General Relativity. This book: General Relativity from A to B explains the ideas behind GR without a lot of math, but it does so in a precise way. It's a really good book.

Next, Quantum Mechanics. This book: In Search of Schrodinger's Cat is a great introduction to the people and ideas of Quantum Mechanics. I like it a lot.

For general physics knowledge. Lots of people really like the
Feynman Lectures They cover everything and so have quite a bit of math in them. As a taster you can get a couple of books: Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces, though the not so easy pieces are a bit more mathematically minded.

Now I'll take the opportunity to recommend my own pet favourite book. The Road to Reality. Roger Penrose wrote this to prove that anyone could understand all of theoretical physics, as such it's one of the hardest books you can read, but it is fascinating and tells you about concepts all the way up to String Theory. If you've got time to think and work on the exercises I found it well worth the time. All the math that's needed is explained in the book, which is good, but it's certainly not easy!

Lastly, for understanding more of the ideas which underlie theoretical physics, this is a good book: Philsophy of Physics: Space and Time It's not the best, but the ideas behind theoretical physics thought are important and this is an interesting and subtle book. I'd put it last on the reading list though.

Anyway, I hope that helps, keep learning about physics and asking questions! If there's anything else you want to know, feel free to ask.

u/literal · 0 pointsr/AskReddit

That book is a sequel to In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality, which is pretty good.