In Search of Schrodinger's Cat

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La capacidad de John Gribbin de despertar la curiosidad y al mismo tiempo ser un buen crítico de la manera como los físicos hemos divulgado o entendemos la teoría cuántica es genial, especialmente al hablar de un tema de tanto interés. I enjoy all the history, connections and stories, and the experiments and ideas—just don’t ask me to recite any of it. Saber sobre el origen de la mecánica matricial de Heisenberg y la tensión con Max Born, con autores de la misma y que quedaron excluídos del premio Nobel que gano el primero.

I won’t spoil this content if, like myself, you’re going on blind with very little pre-knowledge on quantum mechanics. He investigates the atom, radiation, time travel, the birth of the universe, superconductors and life itself.

I would recommend Brian Greene, but he always wants to throw a plug in for the wonders of string theory and how it will solve EVERY SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM EVER; IT WILL EVEN CURE CANCER AND OBESITY! When you decide to open the box the world instantly splits into two with a dead cat in one and a purring and very much alive cat in another.

Without pulling any mathematical punches the author neatly explains lasers, masers, semiconductors, quantum computers, entanglement, and things of not-so-distant or far away future. Science is often best understood in this chronological fashion, to allow us to see the different layers of key insights and discoveries that have been added to the basic structure of quantum mechanics over time. Well, it was all these scientists talking about wave/ particle duality - how subatomic particles behaved both like a wave and a particle, and changed into one or the other only upon observation. A vial of a deadly chemical which will instantly kill the cat is placed inside with the cat, sealed so the feline is safe. This book does a great job at stripping this away to give a written account of the incredible insights from the subject.He also uses thought experiments to help the reader understand the crucial concepts and interpretations of quantum physics, including of course Schrödinger's cat.

Some more experiments later they discover the "photon" and the dual nature (particle and wave nature) of light and particles like electrons. He then explains the Planck's black body radiation and the famous two-slit experiment whose observations threw the entire scientific community into a state of utter ambiguity and disarray about the nature of electrons. As Richard Feynman said, “One of the ways of stopping science would be only to do experiments in the region where you know the law. It has been described as among the best of the first wave of physics popularisations preceding Stephen Hawking's multi-million-selling A Brief History of Time. The book does show its age at parts but his amazement at PCs and LASERs does not change the fact that they are awesome and stem from the study of quantum mechanics.As a 'non-science' person, I can't say I followed everything but enough to give me a solid understanding for what it is and why it's so mystifying.