(Re-)Learn Quantum Mechanics

(Returning students: Please see below for May 5th homework.)

Attention Schrödinger & Heisenberg fans! Have you misplaced your wavefunctions and eigenvalues or never learned how to find them in the first place? Then join us for a weekly study group to learn (or re-learn) quantum mechanics!

We’re following the structure of the MIT OpenCourseWare Quantum Physics I class, which includes comprehensive video lectures, lecture notes, and assignments. These will be supplemented by the various textbooks and resources that you and your fellow students bring to the group.

What to expect – Here is our current format:

• Before each meeting, we will assign ourselves a lecture to watch and a set of exercises that everyone is invited to try for next time. (All of this is optional and there is never anything expected or required – this is a self-study group!)
• During the meeting, one or more volunteers will teach the lesson(s) in their own words, and others will present their solutions to (or attempts at!) the exercises.
• Every 4th meeting will be a dedicated problem-solving session with no lecture.
• Between meetings, we will collaborate through our chat server and/or small study sessions during "office hours". New members should especially take advantage of these to get up to speed. Ask us for details and links to these fantastic resources!

Prerequisites: So long as you have taken at least some amount of college calculus and physics at some point in your life, you should be fine.

We maintain a live chat server for staying in touch between meetups. Ask us for a link.

This event joins our other existing collaborative study tracks. Please note that this particular meetup series is a highly mathematical meetup for everyone who is serious about learning the material. It is not a general discussion group for popular physics topics or sci-fi tangents. For casual physics chat, please attend our regular Discuss Physics and Make Friends event, held every third Wednesday of the month.

Having technical trouble joining the meeting? You need to use the Zoom app and log in with a (free to create) personal Zoom account before you can join our meeting. You might not be able to join directly from a web browser if you can’t log in.

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*** Suggested assignment for May 5 ***

• Watch Lecture 13 (more scattering)
• Solve problems 4 – 6 in Problem Set 6.
• If you’re joining us for the first time, simply watch Lecture 1 and come join us!