Tales of the Quantum

Everybody has heard that we live in a world made of atoms. But far more fundamentally, we live in a universe made of quanta. Many things are not made of atoms: light, radio waves, electric current, magnetic fields, Earth’s gravitational field, not to mention exotica such a neutron stars, black holes, dark energy, and dark matter. But everything, including atoms, is made of highly unified or “coherent” bundles of energy called “quanta” that (like everything else) obey certain rules. In the case of the quantum, these rules are called “quantum physics.” This is a book about quanta and their unexpected, some would say peculiar, behavior–tales, if you will, of the quantum.

The quantum has developed the reputation of being capricious, bewildering, even impossible to understand. The peculiar habits of quanta are certainly not what we would have expected to find at the foundation of physical reality, but these habits are not necessarily bewildering and not at all impossible or paradoxical. This book explains those habits–the quantum rules–in everyday language, without mathematics or unnecessary technicalities. While most popular books about quantum physics follow the topic’s scientific history from 1900 to today, this book follows the phenomena: wave-particle duality, fundamental randomness, quantum states, superpositions (being in two places at once), entanglement, non-locality, Schrodinger’s cat, and quantum jumps, and presents the history and the scientists only to the extent that they illuminate the phenomena.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Tale of the Quantum in the Window

Part 1. The Universe Is Made of Quanta

2. What Is Quantum Physics About?

3. Particles and Classical Mechanics

4. Fields and Classical Electromagnetism

5. What Is a Quantum?

Part 2. How Quanta Behave

6. Perfect Randomness

7. Quantum States and How They Change

8. Superpositions and Macroscopic Quanta

9. An Entangled, Nonlocal Universe

Part 3. Getting Back to the Normal World

10. Schrodinger’s Cat and “Measurement”

11. The Environment as Monitor

Review

“This book is definitely worth reading. Hobson does an excellent job of explaining complex physics without mathematics and presents his argument clearly… Recommended.” — CHOICE“Tales of the Quantum — a slim volume very handsomely produced by Oxford U.P. — is his most ambitious undertaking, the capstone of a distinguished career. … This is certainly an ambitious book, one in which the author has clearly invested a great deal of thought. It is, in its eccentric way, an important book, not least because it is so provocative.” — American Journal of Physics

About the Author

Art Hobson is a Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he continues to keep a campus office and remains quite active in research.