Reviews

Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed by Jim Al-Khalili

sophytoteva's review against another edition

I moved country and no longer have the book with me 

solanpolarn's review

5.0

Excellent book on quantum mechanics, managing to be interesting, accurate, and entertaining, as well as conveying how mind-boggling quantum mechanics is.

paulamaddock's review against another edition

4.0

Great book. Learned a lot about quantum physics.

tobyj416's review

Not the right vibe for now, I’ll get back to it later

ben_sch's review against another edition

2.0

If Al-Khalili spent less time waxing about how strange and weird and strange quantum mechanics is, and more time explaining it in a clear manner, perhaps it would seem less strange. He jumps around to different topics, and his chapters are interspersed with essays by other physicists, none of whom agreed on what exactly had been covered so far. All of this makes for a difficult time understanding---though it is easy to read.

He does cover many interesting topics, including different interpretations (such as the de-Broglie Bohm, many worlds, and even brushes a little on less common ones such as the transactional interpretation), and applications to other fields.

neil_denham's review against another edition

2.0

I got about 3 or 4 chapters in and was still perplexed. I am afraid this went back to the library half finished. I certainly want to read another book on this topic (message me if you know a good one!) but sadly this one left me feeling BOTH patronised AND confused.

anitaofplaybooktag's review against another edition

3.0

This book made my brain hurt. Seriously. I simultaneously realized how smart and creative theoretical physicists really are, and my little brain pales in comparison.

I really couldn't rate this book in all fairness because I'm way too conflicted about it. The author had a wonderful voice, and the book is beautifully illustrated. I seriously give him five stars for effort. He really, really tried to make this stuff understandable. He used examples. He used pictures. He didn't use sophisticated language.

Nonetheless, I just couldn't really understand a whole lot of it. I was doing pretty good in the first few chapters -- and only because I have taken a couple of years of calculus. But later on, I was just lost and also a bit bored because some of the concepts were just eluding me, and you needed those concepts to understand the latter part of the book.

I did come away with incredible admiration for folks who actually do understand this stuff and can apply it to real world applications. Because it seriously is the most counterintuitive thing I've ever come across.

A part of me would like to try another book on the subject to see I would come away any more enlightened.

A part of me would like to remain blissfully ignorant.

Another very strange thing about this book is that some of the concepts are so counter to reason that it really casts doubt in my mind on my own atheistic beliefs which are seriously derived from reason and rationale thought.

Quantum physics really seems to highlight the limits of our understanding while simultaneously showing how brilliant we are. We can create predictive mathematical formulas that WORK under all sorts of experimental conditions. But we don't know why they work.

Brain. hurts. bad.

All in all, hats off to the author for even attempting to bring this subject down to layperson's terms even if he wasn't 100% successful with this particular layperson.

bakudreamer's review against another edition

3.0

Contains a lot of information.

kelleybee's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

4.0

srreid's review against another edition

4.0

Definitely one of the easier to read science books I've tackled, only brief mentions of the sorts of formula that turn you off.