https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/index.htmlNarrow Relativity I Narrow Relativity II Quantum mechanics for all: a first look Quantum Mechanics II: To Deepen Matter Quantum Mechanics III: Quantum Computing Quantum Mechanics IV: Condensed Matter Quantum Mechanics V: Fields and Particles Theoretical Physics - Landau Space, Time Quanta - Mills Flat & Curved SpaceTimes - Ellis Fly by night Physics - Zee Contemporary Physics - Quang,Kumar,Lam Physical World - Manton & Mee Feynman and Disclosure Feynman's Physics. The QED Revolution and the Nobel Prize to FeynmanHugoensandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)2020- All rights reserved.Fri, 14 Mar 2025 23:05:02 +0100https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/rel020/index.htmlMon, 28 Sep 2020 20:46:32 +0200sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/rel020/index.htmlIntroductions in Italian A1) Edwin F. Taylor, John Archibald Wheeler - Spacetime physics- 2nd ed. (1992) online https://www.eftaylor.com/spacetimephysics/ — Local Copy transl.it. Physics of Space Timeo (2018) john Wheeler: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler A2) Daniel F. Styer - Relativity for the Questioning Mind - (2011) transl.it. Really Understanding Relativity (2012) home Daniel Styer: https://www2.oberlin.edu/physics/dstyer/ A3) Elio Fabri - Teaching relativity in the 21st century. From Galileo’s “navilio” to the expansion of the Universe, aIF Notebook No. 16, April-June 2005 online https://www.sagredo.eu/Q16/ — Local Copy A4) Max Born, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (1962) transl.it. La sintesi einsteniana (1976) A5) Sean Carroll,Space Time and Motion (2024) A6) Richard Feynman - Six less easy pieces. einstenian relativity, symmetry, space-time. (2004) (six lectures extracted from Feynman’s Lectures on Physics) Introductions in Italian Disclosure in Italian C1) Giorgio Chinnici - Absolute and Relative. Relativity from Galileo to Einstein and Beyond (2015) C2) Simone Baroni - Understanding Time and Space. A Journey into Einstein’s Relativity (2023) C3) Amedeo Balbi - Chasing a ray of light. Discovering the theory of relativity (2021) C4) Clement V. Durell, “Readable Relativity” (1960) transl. it. “Relativity with the four operations,” 2nd ed. English introductions D1) David J. Morin - Special Relativity. For the Enthusiastic Beginner (2017) D2) N. David Mermin - It’s About Time: Understanding Einstein’s Relativity(2019) D3) Robert L. Mills - Space, Time and Quanta (1994) - Part I (Space and Time) D4) Ralph Baierlein - From Newton to Einstein. the Trail of Light, (2001) If one has to recommend only one book for studying the theory of special relativity it is A1, “Physics of Space Time,” by John Wheeler and Edwin Taylor. Wheeler, one of the most important scientists of the 20th century, should need no introduction. Pioneer in nuclear physics, general relativity, quantum gravity, geometrodynamics, master of Nobel laureates (from Feynman to Thorne), invented geons, quantum foam, the term “black hole,” the Participatory Anthropic Principle, the “It from Bit” Principle (Everything is information, there is no physical reality without first an information structure). Co-author of the Apple Book (the Gravitation, with Misner and Nobel laureate Thorne, his student), a Bible for prophets of general relativity. The treatment in Physics of Spacetime is rigorous and thorough, but does not require any special prior knowledge of mathematics, nor physics.The second English edition is free online, with a copy also on this site, and has been translated and published in Italian.The sequel, on the theory of general relativity, Exploring Black Holes, is also free online, but unfortunately has not been translated.https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/rel025/index.htmlMon, 28 Sep 2020 20:46:32 +0200sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/rel025/index.htmlClassics of popularization D1) Albert Einstein, “Relativity: popular exposition. With classical writings on space geometry physics,” 5th ed. (2010) Q2) Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld, “The Evolution of Physics.” D3) Julian Schwinger, “Einstein’s Legacy.” Q4) George Gamow, “Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland.” Works, thoughts and quotations by Albert Einstein Albert Einstein - The Two Relativity: The Articles of 1905 and 1916 (2021) Albert Einstein - How I see the world. the theory of relativity Albert Einstein - Thoughts, ideas and opinions Albert Einstein - Scientific Autobiography Albert Einstein, Alice Calaprice (ed.) - The Ultimate Quotable Einstein Biographies of Albert Einstein Abraham Pais - Subtle is the Lord …: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (1982) transl.it. “Einstein: Thin is the Lord…The Science and Life of Albert Einstein” (2015) Walter Isaacson - Einstein. his life, his universe (2017) To elaborate further Texts at the graduate level, or otherwise more challenginghttps://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/fisica050qm1/index.htmlFri, 24 Feb 2023 10:58:13 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/fisica050qm1/index.htmlThis is a page of suggestions for a scientific culture for all, and we humbly want to contribute our own selection of readings. A very partial list, influenced by personal taste, of popular books we know, with preference for those also translated into Italian, which we have already reviewed or will review in detail in the future. It might be useful to someone since so much hogwash is also being published on this topic, both in bookstores and on the web and social media. In fact, today it is fashionable to slip in the word “quantum” or “quantum” to support the worst of the “new age” philosophy rubbish, the pseudosciences passed off as medicine and psychology, all kinds of fluff.https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/fisica050qm2/index.htmlFri, 24 Feb 2023 10:58:13 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/fisica050qm2/index.htmlE - Are there any “serious” quantum mechanics textbooks accessible to those who did not study physics and mathematics in college? E1) R.P. Feynman, R. Leighton, M. Sands - “Feynman’s Lectures on Physics,” Vol. III, “Quantum Mechanics” (1st ed. 1966, new millennium ed. 2006) transl.it “Feynman’s Physics,” Vol. III “Quantum Mechanics.” E2) Leonard Susskind, Art Friedman - “Quantum Mechanics” (The Theoretical Minimum Vol. II) - (2015) E3) Alexandre Zagoskin - “Quantum Mechanics: A complete introduction” (2015) Alternatively:https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/fisica050qm3/index.htmlFri, 24 Feb 2023 10:58:13 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/fisica050qm3/index.htmlQuantum Computing - Simple Disclosure Simone Severini - In the land of qubits. quantum physics and the boundaries of computing (2022) Fabio Chiarello - The quantum mechanic’s workshop. From Schröedinger’s cat to quantum computing (2014) Introduction to Quantum Computing Chris Bernhardt - Quantum Computing for Everyone (2019) Thomas G. Wong - Introduction to Classical and Quantum Computing (2022)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/fisica050qm4/index.htmlMon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/fisica050qm4/index.htmlThis is a new page.https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/fisica050qm5/index.htmlMon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/fisica050qm5/index.htmlThis is a new page.https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post150/index.htmlFri, 14 Mar 2025 23:05:02 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post150/index.htmlL.Landau, E.Lifsic - Course in Theoretical Physics - Vol. 1-10 A legend, a unique example of an advanced work for specialists sold over a million copies worldwide, and reprinted continuously for over 60 years. The Course in Theoretical Physics is a monumental ten-volume book series, the purpose of which is to cover all of theoretical physics, that was started by Lev Landau and written in collaboration with his student Evgenij Lifšic beginning in the late 1930s. After Landau’s death, Lifšic continued the project, in collaboration with Lev Pitaevskii and Vladimir Berestetskii, writing the remaining volumes. Landau is said to have composed much of the series in his head while he was in an NKVD prison between 1938 and 1939. However, almost all the actual writing of the first volumes was done by Lifšic, giving rise to the motto, “not a word from Landau and not a thought from Lifšic,” although Lifšic’s role was later reevaluated. This series is usually referred to as “Landau and Lifšic.” For a long time, the introduction found in the first volume of the course (Mechanics) was the only available source on Landau’s life. In Italian, the course translation was published by Editori Riuniti, which subsequently reprinted it in the 21st century. The presentation of the material is advanced in level and generally considered suitable for specialized undergraduate courses. Despite this fairly niche nature, an estimated one million volumes of the Course have been sold as of 2005. The series has been called “renowned” by Science and “celebrated” by American Scientist. A note in Mathematical Reviews states, “The usefulness and success of this course has been demonstrated by the large number of subsequent editions in Russian, English, French, German and other languages.” In a centennial celebration of Landau’s career, it was noted how the Course showed “unprecedented longevity.” In 1962, Landau and Lifšic received the Lenin Prize for their work on the Course. This was the first time the Lenin Prize was awarded for teaching physics. In Italy, the series was particularly popular with physics students (especially in the 1970s and 1980s) partly because of its low cost and easy availability, since it was distributed even in nonspecialized bookstores.https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post130/index.htmlFri, 14 Mar 2025 23:04:52 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post130/index.htmlRobert Mills - SPACE, TIME AND QUANTA. An introduction to contemporary physics - 1st ed. 1994 The fortunate turning point in Robert Lawrence Mills’ life came in 1954 at age 27, when he was finishing his PhD in theoretical physics at Columbia University in New York. Having obtained a small place to finish his thesis at Brookhaven National Lab, Long Island, they put him in a small room with two desks along with a young 32-year-old Chinese man, a former student and favorite assistant of Enrico Fermi in Chicago, Chen-Ning Yang. Immediately the two plunged into working together on the possibility of extending to interactions between elementary particles a property of Maxwell’s equations, and of QED, known as local “gauge” invariance, first proposed 40 years earlier by the brilliant German mathematical physicist Hermann Weyl (see, e.g., “Space Time Matter”). A few months later (October) the article by Yang and Mills came out in Physical Review in which they proposed quantum field theories with noncommutative gauge invariance (in which the outcome depends on the order of the symmetry transformations), one of the main building blocks of the standard model of elementary particles, fundamental interactions, and modern high-energy physics. Three years later Yang flew to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of non-conservation of parity in weak interactions (more or less in simple words, “the microscopic world is different when reflected through a mirror”), proposed in collaboration with compatriot Tsung Dao Lee, and immediately verified in the spectacular experiment of Chien-shiung Wu (“Madame Wu”), also from China.https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post120/index.htmlFri, 14 Mar 2025 23:04:34 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post120/index.htmlGeorge F.R. Ellis, Ruth M. Williams - FLAT AND CURVED SPACE-TIMES - 2nd ed. Oxford (2001) Several important holidays fall on March 14: March 14 (3/14 in Anglo-Saxon countries) is International Pi Greco Day , on which we have already given. On March 14, 1879, a genius, Albert Einstein, was born in Ulm, Baden-Württemberg On March 14, 1988 near Sacramento, California, was born Marina-Ann Hantzis, better known to the world as Sasha Grey, not a genius but certainly a very intelligent woman. On March 14, 2018, a genius, Stephen Hawking, died in Cambridge, England To celebrate (2) and (4) instead, we can take back in one hand a great book, by George Ellis.https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post090/index.htmlFri, 14 Mar 2025 22:44:03 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post090/index.htmlAnthony Zee - FLY BY NIGHT PHYSICS: How Physicists Use the Backs of Envelopes, Princeton University Press, 2020 Jay Orear (Fermi’s collaborator and author of general physics textbooks) to the question “what is physics?” answered: “Physics is what physicists do late at night.” reminded us a few days ago Scientific Stories. Here “Fly by night physics” (more or less: physics in flying at night) is what physicists really do late at night, a good book about what is not taught in books: misuse of the back of envelopes, arm’s length estimates of orders of magnitude, dimensional analysis, conjecture about the variables involved, screwed and carped logical leaps, genius ideas that can only come to you at dawn after a sleepless night, so much so that the morning exists only to sleep late. In courses students are generally required to perform precise calculations, mastering a huge array of complicated mathematical methods. Idealized textbook exercises and problems in assigned assignments and exams reinforce the mistaken impression that science is the application of rigid recipes, and the effort to do more or less complex math. As a result, even the best students may find themselves completely unprepared for the challenges of work, in research or industry. Unless they meet an excellent lecturer on their way. In my case, I had Giorgio Salvini (the “father” of the Frascati INFN electrosyncrotron), who always insisted on correctly estimating orders of magnitude, and considering size, before throwing his head down and doing calculations. John Archibald Wheeler (the inventor of the term “black hole” and much more) used to tell his students (including Feynman): “Never calculate anything ever unless you already know the answer!” True science is made up of critical and creative thinking, deep insights, and calculators and computers are used for calculations. Exact counts, done in the head or on a piece of paper, do not always matter.https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post080/index.htmlFri, 14 Mar 2025 22:43:59 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post080/index.htmlHo-Kim Quang, Narendra Kumar, Chi-Sing Lam - Invitation to Contemporary Physics, 2nd ed revised Singapore (2004), 3rd reprint World Scientific (2012). A major limitation of many popular and introductory books on modern physics is that they are too focused on “fundamental” physics (forces and particles, relativity and cosmology), with too narrow a view of a much broader and more fascinating subject, and they take reductionist dogma too seriously. A much more balanced reading among the different areas of physics is the revised second edition of Ho-Kim,Kumar and Lam’s text (the first one lacks more than a third of the topics). It is a semidivulgent introduction to modern physics, that is, with as little mathematics as possible, simpler than a college course, but more authoritative and rigorous than a popular book for “layman” (the man in the street, the general reader according to Americans). a very useful guide for the student of any science subject, but also for the general reader who is not too frightened by a few formulas or tables, for refresher teachers who also want to talk about recent discoveries, and even for the researcher in other branches of science who wants to keep abreast of advances in physics in areas in which he or she is not a specialist.https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post050/index.htmlFri, 14 Mar 2025 22:43:49 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/post050/index.htmlN.Manton, N.Mee - The Physical World: An Inspirational Tour of Fundamental Physics (2017) A beautiful volume that provides a comprehensive, unified, authoritative and up-to-date overview of Physics, which cannot be easily placed in a standard category. It is not and is not intended to be a textbook, a textbook for a university course, such as those by Feynman or Shankar, for example. It is not only intended for physics students, but also for those who are studying or have studied other scientific or technical subjects (mathematics, chemistry, science, computer science, engineering,…) and in general for curious people with at least a secondary education (diploma), who want to know something about contemporary physics. This is not an extension text for everyone; it requires some commitment on the part of the reader. A minimum knowledge of basic mathematics (algebra, geometry, vectors, derivatives and integrals) is very useful,however sufficient as a basic preparation is that of high schools and technical colleges, many formulas can be skipped without problems for understanding the subject. Since the publication of Feynman’s Lectures in Physics has now been nearly sixty years, a new account was needed authoritative of general physics for non-specialists. The book meets this demand because it starts from the mechanics of Galilei and Newton to Aspect’s experiments on Bell’s inequality (Nobel 2022), the Atlas and CMS experiments at CERN with the discovery of the Higgs boson (Nobel 2013), the LIGO experiment with the detection of gravitational waves (Nobel 2017). In the ’last chapter, the limits of the standard model of elementary particles, solitons and skyrmions, supersymmetry and string theory are mentioned.https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/feynman/post030/index.htmlFri, 14 Mar 2025 22:43:43 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/feynman/post030/index.htmlRichard Feynman - Six Easy Pieces Richard Feynman - Six Pieces Less Easy Richard Feynman - QED: the strange theory of light and matter Richard Feynman - The Physical Law Most readers even if they are curious to learn more about physics will never read from beginning to end an entire university course in three large volumes like Feynman’s Physics. But this is not to recommend reading some successful popular textbook, topping the sales charts, in which physics is reduced at best to a collection of fairy tales, science fiction, simple words that confuse ideas, and various hypotheses that cannot be tested experimentally. When it does not lapse into philosophical fluff, quackery, or historical gossip. Much better to read all four, or at least a couple, of these nimble little volumes by Nobel laureate Richard Feynman:https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/feynman/post020/index.htmlFri, 14 Mar 2025 22:43:40 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/feynman/post020/index.htmlA legendary work, like its author, 1965 Nobel Prize winner for the theory of quantum electrodynamics: Feynman’s Physics. A three-volume course (five tomes in the previous bilingual edition, English original with Italian translation opposite), based on lectures given at California Polytechnic Institute (CalTech) by Richard Feynman from 1961 to 1963 for freshmen in the science and engineering short degree programs, but open to all faculty. A team of physicists and Ph.D. students, led by Robert Leighton and Matthew Sands, then converted the audio recordings and notes into a handbook, published in 1965. Many topics are covered in innovative ways, and with a clarity and depth unique in such texts. As a teaching experiment it was a half disaster, Feynman wanted to renew the teaching of the subject, and keep students’ interest alive with modern and advanced ideas, and clarify the relationship of physics with mathematics and other sciences. But most students in the bachelor’s degree understood almost nothing about it, only those in the master’s and master’s degrees followed the lectures to the end. But after all, “[t]he power of teaching is very limited except in the rare cases where it is practically superfluous” (Ed Gibbon, historian of the Roman empire quoted by Feynman in the preface.) But it is a must-read for anyone who really wants to know what Physics is, according to a 2013 review for the new millenium edition in the journal Nature, the work after so many years continues to soar for “simplicity, beauty, unity…presented with enthusiasm and insight.” All physics students consulted it at least once during the first two years of the course, some even to learn English with the bilingual edition (I used it for that as well, along with Enrico Persico’s booklet, “Guide to Reading Technical English”). The printed and translated edition is rather expensive, but there is an excellent free online version in English, revised and corrected for the new millennium : https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/feynman/qed/index.htmlWed, 30 Nov 2022 23:21:50 +0100sandro@freenetst.it (Sandro Magrì)https://sandromagri.info/en/phys/notes/feynman/qed/index.htmlThe importance of the revolution brought about in Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) and the motivations that led to Richard Feynman’s Nobel Prize. QED QED is first quantum field theory. Maxwell and Einstein had developed classical (non-quantum) field theories for electromagnetism and gravitation. Dirac a quantum mechanics for relativistic charged particles. But a true quantized field theory was needed, QED QED as a coherent, covariant and renormalized theory, i.e., with elimination of infinities in calculations, of developments in perturbative series. interaction with the electromagnetic field can be treated as a perturbation to the case of the free charged particle, but infinite terms appeared in the calculations, and in initial attempts to develop a quantum and relativistic theory of the electromagnetic field the serial development diverged (works of Dirac, Pauli, Wigner, Heisenberg, Fermi, Oppenheimer, Weisskopf, Bloch,…). dirac had introduced the second quantization and particle creation and destruction operators, but it worked only at the first order of approximation, the later terms diverging, as shown e.g., by Weisskopf.