Quantum Physics For Dummies, Revised Edition -- About the Author -- Contents at a Glance -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- About This Book -- Conventions Used in This Book -- Foolish Assumptions -- How This Book Is Organized -- Icons Used in This Book -- Where to Go from Here -- Part I: Small World, Huh? Essential Quantum Physics -- Chapter 1: Discoveries and Essential Quantum Physics -- Being Discrete: The Trouble with Black-Body Radiation -- The First Pieces: Seeing Light as Particles -- A Dual Identity: Looking at Particles as Waves -- You Can't Know Everything (But You Can Figure the Odds) -- Chapter 2: Entering the Matrix: Welcome to State Vectors -- Creating Your Own Vectors in Hilbert Space -- Making Life Easier with Dirac Notation -- Grooving with Operators -- Going Hermitian with Hermitian Operators and Adjoints -- Forward and Backward: Finding the Commutator -- Starting from Scratch and Ending Up with Heisenberg -- Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues: They're Naturally Eigentastic! -- Preparing for the Inversion: Simplifying with Unitary Operators -- Comparing Matrix and Continuous Representations -- Part II: Bound and Undetermined: Handling Particles in Bound States -- Chapter 3: Getting Stuck in Energy Wells -- Looking into a Square Well -- Trapping Particles in Potential Wells -- Trapping Particles in Infinite Square Potential Wells -- Limited Potential: Taking a Look at Particles and Potential Steps -- Hitting the Wall: Particles and Potential Barriers -- Particles Unbound: Solving the Schrödinger Equation for Free Particles -- Chapter 4: Back and Forth with Harmonic Oscillators -- Grappling with the Harmonic Oscillator Hamiltonians -- Creation and Annihilation: Introducing the Harmonic Oscillator Operators -- Finding the Eigenstates -- Looking at Harmonic Oscillator Operators as Matrices.

A Jolt of Java: Using Code to Solve the Schrödinger Equation Numerically -- Part III: Turning to Angular Momentum and Spin -- Chapter 5: Working with Angular Momentum on the Quantum Level -- Ringing the Operators: Round and Round with Angular Momentum -- Finding Commutators of Lx, Ly, and Lz -- Creating the Angular Momentum Eigenstates -- Finding the Angular Momentum Eigenvalues -- Finding the Eigenvalues of the Raising and Lowering Operators -- Interpreting Angular Momentum with Matrices -- Rounding It Out: Switching to the Spherical Coordinate System -- Chapter 6: Getting Dizzy with Spin -- The Stern-Gerlach Experiment and the Case of the Missing Spot -- Getting Down and Dirty with Spin and Eigenstates -- Halves and Integers: Saying Hello to Fermions and Bosons -- Spin Operators: Running Around with Angular Momentum -- Working with Spin 1/2 and Pauli Matrices -- Part IV: Multiple Dimensions: Going 3D with Quantum Physics -- Chapter 7: Rectangular Coordinates: Solving Problems in Three Dimensions -- The Schrödinger Equation: Now in 3D! -- Solving Three-Dimensional Free Particle Problems -- Getting Squared Away with 3D Rectangular Potentials -- Springing into 3D Harmonic Oscillators -- Chapter 8: Solving Problems in Three Dimensions: Spherical Coordinates -- A New Angle: Choosing Spherical Coordinates Instead of Rectangular -- Taking a Good Look at Central Potentials in 3D -- Handling Free Particles in 3D with Spherical Coordinates -- Handling the Spherical Square Well Potential -- Getting the Goods on Isotropic Harmonic Oscillators -- Chapter 9: Understanding Hydrogen Atoms -- Coming to Terms: The Schrödinger Equation for the Hydrogen Atom -- Simplifying and Splitting the Schrödinger Equation for Hydrogen -- Solving for (R) -- Solving for (r) -- Calculating the Energy Degeneracy of the Hydrogen Atom -- Hunting the Elusive Electron.

Chapter 10: Handling Many Identical Particles -- Many-Particle Systems, Generally Speaking -- A Super-Powerful Tool: Interchange Symmetry -- Floating Cars: Tackling Systems of Many Distinguishable Particles -- Juggling Many Identical Particles -- Building Symmetric and Antisymmetric Wave Functions -- Working with Identical Noninteracting Particles -- It's Not Come One, Come All: The Pauli Exclusion Principle -- Figuring out the Periodic Table -- Part V: Group Dynamics: Introducing Multiple Particles -- Chapter 11: Giving Systems a Push: Perturbation Theory -- Introducing Time-Independent Perturbation Theory -- Working with Perturbations to Nondegenerate Hamiltonians -- Perturbation Theory to the Test: Harmonic Oscillators in Electric Fields -- Working with Perturbations to Degenerate Hamiltonians -- Testing Degenerate Perturbation Theory: Hydrogen in Electric Fields -- Chapter 12: Wham-Blam! Scattering Theory -- Introducing Particle Scattering and Cross Sections -- Translating between the Center-of-Mass and Lab Frames -- Tracking the Scattering Amplitude of Spinless Particles -- The Born Approximation: Rescuing the Wave Equation -- Part VI: The Part of Tens -- Chapter 13: Ten Quantum Physics Tutorials -- An Introduction to Quantum Mechanics -- Quantum Mechanics Tutorial -- Grains of Mystique: Quantum Physics for the Layman -- Quantum Physics Online Version 2.0 -- Todd K. Timberlake's Tutorial -- Physics 24/7's Tutorial -- Stan Zochowski's PDF Tutorials -- Quantum Atom Tutorial -- College of St. Benedict's Tutorial -- A Web-Based Quantum Mechanics Course -- Chapter 14: Ten Quantum Physics Triumphs -- Wave-Particle Duality -- The Photoelectric Effect -- Postulating Spin -- Differences between Newton's Laws and Quantum Physics -- Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle -- Quantum Tunneling -- Discrete Spectra of Atoms -- Harmonic Oscillator -- Square Wells.

Schrödinger's Cat -- Glossary -- Index.