Update: I’m Still Writing The Road to Quantum Mechanics

Joseph Mellor
11 min readMay 1

You haven’t seen much from me for a few weeks, but I’ve been doing a lot behind the scenes.

I don’t have an image for this article, so I’m going to use a random image from the upcoming article on the Generalized Stokes’ Theorem.

It’s been about three weeks since I’ve published my last article for two reasons:

  1. I want to finish writing most of the articles in the Mathematical Objects arc before I publish future articles.
  2. I’ve been tutoring students more frequently since they’ve been having tests and finals.

As you can imagine, the second reason is not going to be as much of a problem soon, so I want to focus on the first reason.

Plans for the Road to Quantum Mechanics

I want to start this update by talking about my plans for the series yet again. This time, I’ll have a much greater focus on the next few articles.

Finishing The Mathematical Objects Arc

Currently the plan for the next few articles in the series will be

  1. The Generalized Stokes’ Theorem
  2. An Intro to Tensors
  3. The Levi-Civita Symbol and Alternating Tensors
  4. Tensors in Physics (maybe)
  5. Maxwell’s Equations and Differential Forms

Of these articles, I’ve written the majority of the content for The Generalized Stokes’ Theorem, An Intro to Tensors, and Maxwell’s Equations and Differential Forms. I have started neither Tensors in Physics nor The Levi-Civita Symbol and Alternating Tensors, but I know neither will be difficult. For Tensors in Physics, I plan on talking about continuum mechanics and the multipole expansion using tensors. That article will likely be shorter than my normal articles because I don’t feel that I need to go into any significant depth. For a start, I haven’t built up a Quantum Mechanical model of a solid, so we won’t be able to go into too much depth into the underlying Physics. Plus, if you think of the multipole expansion like a Laurent series, it’s short enough to cover. Likewise, I shouldn’t have too much trouble with The Levi-Civita Symbol and Alternating Tensors because it’s a well-covered topic and the only goal is to rewrite differential forms in terms of tensors.

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/.