Reviews

The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone by Kenneth W. Ford

anarcosynthesis's review against another edition

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2.0

Not quite for "everyone": I thought a lot of the concepts in the book were very poorly explained. I have previous read several books on quantum mechanics, and this book was in no way clear, concise, and organized. That definitely doesn't help when dealing with a subject as difficult as quantum mechanics. I really believe though that even such a difficult subject can be explained in terms that a 12 year old could understand, but this book simply does not succeed. My understanding has improved somewhat as a result of reading it, but only slightly. Recommended only if you've already tried other books like "In search of schrodinger's cat."

capnhist's review against another edition

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informative inspiring slow-paced

4.25

teaandbooklover's review against another edition

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2.0

I was so hoping this would explain physics to me in easily understandable terms. I had to read paragraphs over and over again to retain things and was very frustrated reading this. It sure doesn't seem like a beginners book to me. That being said, I know that I have some math gaps in my education as I was hospitalized several times a year due to pneumonia when I was young. I wanted a book that explained physics to me without me knowing advances mathematics but sadly this isn't it. I saw the high reviews on it and thought it'd be great but I'll have to find another.

This is just one example: "Our golf ball, shrunk back to the actual size of the proton, has a diameter of about -10~18 m. This is equal to one femtometer or 1 fermi (1 fm ). The smallest distance probed in any experiment so far conducted is about one thousandth of a fermi, or -10~18. The fundamental particles, if they have any size at all, are smaller than this." I could very easily insert lots of paragraphs here that were just as confusing as that one to me but I'll let that suffice.