Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (2nd Edition)

This book first teaches learners how to do quantum mechanics, and then provides them with a more insightful discussion of what it means. Fundamental principles are covered, quantum theory presented, and special techniques developed for attacking realistic problems. The bookoverage organizes topics under basic theory, and assembles an arsenal of approximation schemes with illustrative applications. For physicists and engineers.

This text book is a great introductory text book. It is a text book for students for whom quantum mechanics is a new subject. It is not a text book for people who already know any significant amount of quantum mechanics, nor is it a great text to use for independent study (unless you work the problems and have some way of checking yourself.)

Shankar is too advanced for most students new to the subject. It's also too much material to cover in a standard two semester course where the material is completely new. The only school I know of which uses it is Yale, and they count on students having a stronger background than most students at most schools have. Moreover, I know from personal experience that teachers at Yale focus on getting students to calculate the right answer rather than developing a solid understanding of the ideas behind the physics.

It's also too much material to cover in a standard two semester course where the material is completely new. Griffiths is designed such that it can be used for the quantum mechanics classes at most universities -- ie, if students haven't had every other physics class before they use this book or if some of their background is a little weak, they aren't screwed. This may not agree with some people's notions of how physics should be taught, but the reality is that you can't teach every physics class as if the students had already mastered every subject except that one. This is the reality at most universities.

The fact that this book is accessible does not make it bad. Physics is a wonderful, beautiful subject and we're being really stupid if we judge how "advanced" a book is by how difficult it is to understand. This is a suicidal attitude for our field. I've been reading physics books for a long time, and most of the ones which are difficult to read are difficult because they're not well written, not because the material is inherently difficult.

This book also cannot compensate for its misuse or for bad teaching. When I took the class, the teacher assigned some of the basic problems and some of the difficult problems. That way we made sure we knew the basics before we moved on to the difficult problems. If you're only doing the simple problems, it's your fault you're not getting anything out of it. If you're only doing the computationally difficult problems, you're missing some beautiful, simple examples. The physics is neither more real nor more important if it takes you a day to calculate rather than ten minutes.

This is a problem-centered book, but honestly, that's the way most of us learn. We don't remember things we read as well as we remember things we do. Similarly, new notation is not introduced until later because ideas are being developed first. Introducing too many things at once does not facilitate learning, only frustration. I suggest the people who think they already understand all of the ideas consider what Feynmann said -- "Nobody really understands quantum mechanics."

If you want answers, look them up. If you want to learn, use this book.


amazing!   May 23, 2006
Jun Zhou Zhang (Coram, NY USA)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

This is perhaps the best introduction to quantum mechanics one can get out there. This book follows a very unique and, in my opinion, quite effective path to the basic ideas of quantum mechanics. What I mean is that it does not follow the historical developments of the subject in the early part of the last century like some of the introductory texts do, nor does it take the axiomatic approach like some of the more advanced texts.

The author starts the story by throwing the one-dimensional Schroedinger's equation in the position representation right at you so that you will get acquainted with the wave mechanical view of quantum mechanics as soon as possible. You get to see a few important solutions to the equation in one-dimension and get a rough feel of some of the deeper concepts such as the uncertainty principle, wave-paricle duality, position-momentum conjugacy in a very technical and concrete way. He then introduce the abstract mathematical setting of quantum mechanics and generalize the statistical interpretation. He presents the solution to the hydrogen atom and then introduces angular momentum, which I personally think would be better done in the reversed oder. He then introduces the idea of identical particles and gives a very crude preview of systems of many particles. The above constitutes the first part of the book. In the second part, the author devotes mostly to the applications such as finer spectrum of hydrogen atom using perturbation theory, the variational method and scattering, etc. I think the author's approach has turn out to be very effective in my one-year-long experience in learning the subject.

The problems in the book are very helpful and well organized. There are simple-minded derivations as well as structured problems that require very involved soltuions. But overall the problems seem to be a bit too computational.

This book is very good for one to start learning quantum mechanics and that is perhaps why it is so popular throughout the universities in the US. The author is very clear in terms of his writing. A few more things I think would be helpful for beginningers. The book completely ignores the historical developments, such as some of the extremely important experiments done in the early 1900s. I think these are things one should know about before delving into this book. For more ambitious students, this book is far from being rigous and complete. It does not present a complete and coherent treatment of the abstract formalism. Symmetries and conversation laws are not mentioned. The Heisenburg picture appears in only one problem. The author does too much of his hand-waving trick in the later part of the book. And more. So for a more advanced treatment, I would suggest Shankar which is also extremely lucid. Sakurai is also very excellent and certainly very inspiring in terms of the materials but may be a bit more cumbersome for less experienced readers. For a completely rigorous, concise, as well as up-to-date treatment, Gottfried & Yan seems to be a good pick, which I am trying to ponder through myself.


When You're Ready for the Math, This is the Book   December 18, 2007
Chris Fox (Woodinville, WA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

David Griffiths' Introduction to Elementary Particles is probably the best book on the topic and, absurd though it may seem, the same seems to be true for his Introduction to Quantum Mechanics. While I would recommend Jim Baggott's books on the topic as a better *Introduction* for someone who, like me, has a math education far in the past, Griffiths' book come afterward.

Above and beyond the clarity of presentation there is the engaging tone of Griffiths' writing. His books are for physics what Charles Petzold's books are for programming in Windows; I can read page after page and stay alert. This is more important than you might think especially for an autodidact who has to keep himself motivated,


Best undergraduate Quantum Mechanics book.   May 21, 1999
David McMahon
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

This is the best undergraduate quantum mechanics book I have ever read. Every undergraduate program should be using this book, the other books I've seen don't even come close. That includes Liboff, Goswami, and Greiner.I even think this book is worth a read after going through Cohen-Tannoudji. While the other books leave the student confused, with their heads spinning, Griffiths uses his excellent ability to explain things to provide as clear an introduction to the subject you could imagine. I disagree with the other reviewers, the notion that Davies book is better is absurd. As far as the problems with the examples, I think Griffiths approach is a good one.


I love his style   April 25, 2006
Physicsmind (CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Griffiths again made such a highly readable quantum mechanics textbook for undergraduate physics majors. But if you want to get deeper inside into the materials, you may want to work out a lot of problems. SOme of the companion type of problem books I recommend are Problems and Solutions in Quantum Mechanics (Hardcover) by Kyriakos Tamvakis ". There is a out of print problem book by de Harr Kogan and Galitskiy 0850860504 --Problems in Quantum Mechanics that I found extremely helpful. It's hard to find though. But half dot com or abebooks may have it.