Description
For undergraduate and postgraduate students of chemistry and physics, the author poses, and comprehensibly responds to, five questions: Why is quantum theory necessary? How does it work? What does it mean? How can it be tested? What are the alternatives? Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
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Why is quantum theory so difficult to understand? In this book, written for both undergraduate and graduate students of chemistry and physics, the author looks at the continuing debate about the meaning of quantum theory. The historical development of the theory is traced from the turn of the century through to the 1930s, and the famous debate between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. The book examines in detail the arguments that quantum theory is incomplete, as made by Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen; the development of Bell's theorem; and crucial experimental tests performed in the early 1980s. Alternative interpretations -- pilot waves, quantum gravity, consciousness, and many worlds -- are described in the closing chapter.
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