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The Road to Quantum Mechanics, Part 1: Intro, Coordinates, and Kinematics

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It’s a long road to understanding Quantum Mechanics, and there are no shortcuts. In this series, I’ll show you Quantum Mechanics from the ground up.

The spherical coordinate system. You can find a video with all the coordinate systems animated here.

The word “quantum” roughly means “amount.” In the modern world, it functions as a shorthand for “Quantum Mechanics,” especially when used as an adjective. When used as a noun, it refers to the smallest discrete amount of some physical quantity or phenomenon. While Classical and Quantum Mechanics have many differences, the discrete nature of Quantum Mechanics lies at the heart of all of them.

Credit: xkcd #1861

Why is Quantum Mechanics so Difficult?

Unfortunately, this sudden change to discreteness creates a huge obstacle for many people trying to learn Quantum Mechanics. To make matters even worse, most discussions of Quantum Mechanics have entirely different goals. In many cases, they’ll sacrifice accuracy and even simplify to the point of misrepresentation like they do with entropy. Sci-fi authors bend the rules of Quantum Mechanics in service of the story. While ignoring…

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Written by Joseph Mellor

BS in Physics, Math, and CS with a minor in High-Performance Computing. You can find all my articles at https://josephmellor.xyz/articles/.

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