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If you've studied classical mechanics in an undergrad level, then I recommend you David J. Griffths - Introduction to Quantum Mechanics

If you want to day dream about there being galaxies within every atom and that our universe is just a particle in a greater universe that's fine. Just be aware that what you wrote is closer to what a 15 year old would say after smoking too much weed while watching Sagan documentaries then, you know, actual science.

To answer your question, there isn't a line that separates where gravity acts and where QM acts. They always have an effect on everything, but in some cases one dominates so much the other's effect is negligible. The issue come from our understanding of these phenomena, our theories as of yet aren't perfectly compatible, but there are people working on unified theories.

If you are really excited about this stuff and wants to study it seriously, this is the standard introduction to quantum mechanics. If you have a good background of undergrad math, this is a really accessible introduction.

I would add this wonderful book.

What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics, by Adam Becker - March 20, 2018

https://www.amazon.com/What-Real-Unfinished-Meaning-Quantum/dp/0465096050

I find he is pretty honest about the weaknesses of MW despite it being his "favorite" interpretation. His book also goes over the various interpretations as well I believe - and their strengths and weaknesses.

Susskind's "Theoretical Minimum" is a great place to start for all modern physics if you want to actually get into the math. If you want to learn Quantum computing, I'd look through that as a primer and then check out a dedicated Quantum Computing book.

The standard Quantum Computing text is "Mike & Ike", but I particularly liked the exposition in Kaye, LaFlamme, and Mosca's text. In particular, it starts by discussing classical computing frameworks (Turing machines, circuit diagrams for gates) and then introduces new math and notation that turns out to be the notation for QM. I didn't come from a CS background, but I suspect that text would be clearer for someone who does.

Read the Quantum Enigma by Rosenblum, amazing book to start out with, quantum physics is extremely weird and will fuck with your head a little.

Also, the Elegant Universe lays out string theory and is designed for readers who are beginning to read into physics. Don't let that deceive you, though, it's a very dense book.

Sure: "States" is the set of countries. "|States|" (with the bars) is just the number of states/countries, so if you have a specific set of countries you're interested in, you could use those; otherwise I think there are 195 countries recognized by the UN (193 member states plus the observer states Holy See and Palestine). The square root is necessary because in quantum mechanics, the magnitude of the amplitude squared is the probability, and the probabilities have to sum up to 1.

Any reason you left off David Deutsch's follow-up book "The Beginning of Infinity" ?

Interferometry at the planetary scale.

Tomorrow’s telescopes will be planet-sized quantum teleportation devices

Distance to the screen * wavelength / distance between the slits. As long as your source of coherent light can pass through both slits the distance between the slits could be arbitrarily large, but then the screen has to be placed further away. I would suggest you to buy a diffraction grating like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Rainbow-Symphony-Diffraction-Grating-Slides/dp/B00K6K3MCW/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=diffraction+grating&qid=1658299171&sr=8-4

I recently published a book for people who don't have a strong linear algebra background. (Introduction to Quantum Computing: From a Layperson to a Programmer in 30 Steps). I try to walk through the details and the confusions. I designed the course materials by working backward from the final goal, namely being able to understand the nuts and bolts and perform numerical substitution in common algorithms such as the Quantum Phase Estimation algorithm and Shor’s algorithm and program in IBM-Q . The materials are derived until some basic matrix and vector operations.

If your school subscribes to SpringerLink, you should be able to download for free.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-98339-0

Preview is available here (click "Look inside"):

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Quantum-Computing-Layperson-Programmer/dp/3030983382

I'm a hobbyist when it comes to physics these days (6 years undergrad) but I do follow more mainstream articles in magazines such as Science and Scientific American. I remember reading this article http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-space-digital talking about the geometry of spacetime on quantum scales very similar to this. I honestly believe there are lots of ways to interpret tiny scales like this, from what this guy is saying to string theory, it's still a fairly new hypothesis that some theoretical physicists are working on but I don't believe it's complete yet (and may no bear no fruit experimentally). Any way you look at it, it's fun to think about and any serious scientific research should be considered for experimentation if a valid test can be thought up to confirm or deny this hypothesis. All that being said, this guy is obviously not a researcher in this field and he's taken quite a few liberties here and this is not a good primary source at all. Here's some scholarly publications regarding something similar to this (the quantum geometry of space-time at the planck scale). http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=planck+scale+space+time+geometry&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=N44sUZnTJMfvsgaum4CgDw&sqi=2&ved=0CC4QgQMwAA

If you like Sci-fi there’s also this weird ass piece of fiction about a quantum-influenced afterlife (even I’ll admit it’s a little out there though I find this shit unique and kind of endearing)

https://www.amazon.com/Place-Quarantine-Vadim-Babenko-ebook/dp/B07NWSDT3K

For what it's worth, I think this book might interest you. There are quite a few experiments in there that are interesting and might pave the way for you to better understand what can and cannot be done. I remember there being an experiment in there to make a single photon source with the accompanying math laid out in simple terms. Not sure if there was any mention of creating a cheap single photon detector but if you're really serious, you can look up info on photo multiplier tubes. That may give you some ideas. Like you mentioned, you may not end up succeeding in creating many of the experiments that you set out to do but you'll definitely end up learning a lot in the process. Have fun.

https://www.amazon.com/Exploring-Quantum-Physics-through-Projects/dp/1118140664#

This book is an interesting discussion of the various interpretations.

https://www.amazon.com/Something-Deeply-Hidden-Emergence-Spacetime/dp/1524743011

The author's opinion is that the Many Worlds Interpretation is our best bet, primarily because it's the simplest. You don't need to add anything to it.... no special observers, no hidden variables... it's just the wave function and schrodinger's equation. I tend to agree.

Here’s a vid!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p3P4iKb24Ng

I’d read The Elegant Universe too. It’s a great intro to a bunch of topics that physics is currently covering:

https://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Superstrings-Dimensions-Ultimate/dp/039333810X

I’m sure if you asked your parents to buy this for you, they’d be down

There are exceptions. You can sometimes listen to what mathematicians and philosophers have to say about quantum mechanics: https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Quantum-Mechanics/dp/0674843924/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=structure+and+interpretation+of+quantum+mechanics&qid=1598407115&sr=8-1

Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics

It is a neat book to read to get a general idea of what quantum mechanics is. I read it before taking quantum mechanics in college (10+ years ago) and thought that is was a nice easy introduction into quantum mechanics. I often recommend it to people to read when they don't have a physics background but want to learn more about quantum mechanics.

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'Alice in Quantumland is Robert Gilmore's amazing fantasy ride through the landscape of quantum physics - the interrelated group of theories on the nature of subatomic particles that modern scientists use to explain the physical universe. Through the allegory of Alice's adventures and encounters, Gilmore makes the essential features of the quantum world clear and accessible. It is a thrilling introduction to some essential, often difficult-to-grasp concepts about the world we inhabit.'

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https://www.amazon.com/Alice-Quantumland-Allegory-Quantum-Physics/dp/0387914951

I tought this one was great: Beyond Weird by Philipp Ball You get the history, the findings that make it weird are lucidly explained, and all the different interpretations are clearly discussed. And despite the subject matter it was a breeze to read.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Weird-Philip-Ball/dp/1784706086

https://www.amazon.com/Reality-transurfing-Steps-Vadim-Zeland/dp/1532814658/ref=sr_1_1?crid=K4UV0E6T52ED&dchild=1&keywords=reality+transurfing&qid=1596684900&sprefix=reality+tran%2Caps%2C172&sr=8-1

There is an app Quantum. Download it and go through it. It will give you an overview without any mathematics. The whole Quantum mechanics is summarised for beginners. My advice is to go through it first before reading any other book. It will take you not more than few hours. I am sure after you finish this, you will find it much easier. Thank me later.

That book and this one are the two best introductions:

• https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computing-Introduction-Engineering-Computation/dp/0262526670

You should get both.

Both will be useless to you unless you know enough math. How far along are you?

>I'd point out the numerous conceptual errors you showed in that last comment (eg. according to special relativity, photons don't have mass, because they move at the speed of light), but I'm clearly wasting my time here.

Anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about wouldn’t even use the term “the speed of light.” Einstein’s famous equation refers to the speed of the smallest form of energy we know of in a vacuum (P.S: the universe is by no means a vacuum; there’s mass everywhere). Photons travel more slowly around objects with large mass, which is why light can’t escape black holes.

You make far too many assumptions based on unfinished data. Again, there was a point where atoms were only theorized to exist. This theory is simply the next step.

>I'll leave with a book recommendation. Don't worry, it doesn't have any math.

I appreciate the recommendation, but not so much the condescending remark. It’s not that I have trouble with math; I’m just not going to learn equations that are not needed to prove/falsify my own theory. The equation I have now doesn’t work and is useless and meaningless, I get that. It’s a work in progress.

For a concise introduction to the concepts without all the jargon I’d recommend “Q is for Quantum” by Terry Rudolph. It doesn’t assume university-level maths like most of others, and yet it gets to explain most of the fundamental aspects without getting tangled in technicalities. For a tester of his style you can check his inaugural lecture on YouTube!

https://www.amazon.com/Q-Quantum-Terry-Rudolph/dp/0999063502

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JKGZDhQoR9E

A Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics By Townsend is the text that my class used. It's approachable and thorough, and requires only minimal prereq knowledge to get started (EM, Linear Algebra, some calculus, Complex numbers).

Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality

HUGE fan of this one. What it offers instead of many other books is it takes a historical approach to the story, which to me makes the subject significantly more interesting. He starts at Planck, describing his whole life by piecing together historical information, and does the same with every other physicist mentioned. With time, you have a full picture of each character and their life of debating each other on these topics. I really loved how he'd give a very full description of how a discovery happened, for example Heisenberg taking a very late night walk when he thought of the idea of the Uncertainty Principal. Kumar manages to keep the lead-up to each breakthrough very suspenseful by describing the state of physics at the time and the pressure each physicist was under. Later, after the famous debates we are presented with World War II and how each of the major players lived their lives throughout the war (Heisenberg worked on atomic weapon research for the axis, while Bohr was shipped to America to work on the Manhattan Project, and before the war they were both best friends). In the end you'll have a deep historical knowledge of these physicists, while having a good beginner understanding of the theories. I'm not a big reader, but I found myself glued to the book, extremely interested in what will happen next.

I remember getting a few good laughs in as well, while reading it. For example, during the Solvay convention Einstein temporarily outsmarted Bohr with a surprise thought experiment, and in this picture we can really see the personality of each of them. (Look at Einstein's smug face)

Not exactly what you are looking for, but the textbook with the lowest barrier to entry is (imo) QFT for the Gifted Amateur.

I would say that after Griffiths's QM book (also recommended) you are ready for your first (but probably not your last) attempt at Gifted Amateur.

If you know calculus, all you are lacking to get started on Griffiths is linear algebra.

Good luck!

What if reality is like a book and we're measuring weight, width, letter and word frequencies instead of reading the meaning? Maybe there's a whole other dimension to reality that we are discounting -- meaning. In this view particles are actually symbols of meaning or information. Anyway, this is kind of what the Semantic Interpretation proposes - its insights are from Indian philosophy and the everyday experience of knowledge and language as realities in this world. There's more detail in the this book's description. The premise is: What if atoms are not things but ideas?

I really like The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. It's been out for years and helps give a great understanding of quantum theory.

Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg is pretty good as a conceptual book.

You could have a look at books on quantum information. Quantum information doesn't require much more than a bit of algebra and yet conveys and exploits much of the excitement (entanglement, superposition) of the field. Here's a very entry level book which covers QI in general, and here's a more involved book on quantum computation written for computer scientists without the required physics background.

It's in a weird place between having-FTL and not-having-FTL and no one agrees on how to interpret it.

There are interpretations of quantum mechanics that have no FTL effects, even hidden behind the scenes, but they replace those effects with other weird things (such as many worlds).

If you want to slowly clue in on quantum things, I recommend reading Scott Aaronson's blog (or book):

> quantum mechanics exhibits what one might not have realized beforehand was even a logical possibility: it doesn’t allow communication faster than light, but simulating the predictions of quantum mechanics in a classical universe would require faster-than-light communication

I've just started a new subreddit called /r/bibliographies, a project to collect introductory guides for every subject. I've just posted a quantum mechanics bibliography that might help you with book recommendations, videos, and lecture notes. I'd recommend starting with Griffiths' Introduction to Quantum Mechanics; as an engineer I'm fairly sure you know all of the differential equations and linear algebra you'll need.

> for the layman mathematician

Just read this book. Quantum mechanics can't be properly explained in a one-hour documentary.