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I have been told by professors that in order to understand physical interpretation of Wave function and De Broglie Wave, one must understand the history of Quantum Mechanics that started with the 'Blackbody radiation'. But 'Blackbody radiation' is followed by many other topics (different experiments that were being carried and their results during the end of 1800) of interest and most importantly 'importance'. There are too many. I would love to go through all of them one by one but I have to keep up with my teachers in order to take my semester. Alongside, I don't want to skip any topic that is necessary to understand the physical interpretation of wave function. So I need the experts' recommendations upon this i.e. what 'selected' topics should I go through and in what 'sequence'. Like there are given many in a book that tries to introduce you to the Modern Physics (example; 'Introduction to Modern Physics by Kennard, Cooper..') but I want to identify only those which are most needed and kind of enough to understand what I want to understand.

Also, I have tried to understand, directly, the physical interpretation of wave function from different books and articles and forums but it didn't work.

And, if this question had already been posted so kindly share the link and ask me to remove this so that I could check that page (link) out and tell if it helped or not. If it helps me out, I will remove this post myself otherwise, kindly, don't rush to remove it.

Qmechanic
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Sufyan Naeem
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  • What's wrong with the typical QM texts, like Griffiths? – BioPhysicist Dec 14 '19 at 15:31
  • That book don't give you the physical interpretation. It just includes the mathematical treatment of wave function. – Sufyan Naeem Dec 14 '19 at 15:33
  • Odd, I remember it having many physical examples, exercises, etc. It explains how you get physical observables from the wavefunction. In my opinion it's fairly light on the math, and it even saves more of the mathematical formalism for just one chapter of the book. I doubt you will find QM texts that don't tie math into the interpretations though... – BioPhysicist Dec 14 '19 at 15:35
  • Do you believe that wave function can be understood without getting to know the history of QM? I am pretty sure it's not possible. I mean, history will tell you what had been the need for introducing a new physical entity viz, wave function and that will definitely help out. – Sufyan Naeem Dec 14 '19 at 15:40
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    I think the history can be useful and interesting, but I think you might be limiting yourself if you think you must know all of the history before you jump into QM. Keep in mind that the history of science is full of failed attempts, interpretations, etc. I would argue any history you end up reading will still be a polished version and not the entire story. The point of QM texts is to help show a "final" polished version that should help you understand QM. You should learn how you learn the best, but this is just something to consider. – BioPhysicist Dec 14 '19 at 15:47
  • That's the problem. QM text by Griffiths is not a polished version of the entire story. It is something lesser than that. It just tells you about the accepted results and how to treat them mathematically. – Sufyan Naeem Dec 14 '19 at 15:54
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    Then you might think of editing your question to ask for QM history references. Then once you feel like you have learned enough of that you can jump into actually doing QM and learning how to use it. I doubt you will find a text that sufficiently covers the history you want as well as the math, application, etc. I'm just saying I don't think the history is necessarily required to understand QM. – BioPhysicist Dec 14 '19 at 15:57
  • @AaronStevens well said... –  Dec 14 '19 at 16:04
  • @SufyanNaeem If you don't understand anything, then ping me after a while, I'll present you a simplified version of QM... –  Dec 14 '19 at 16:04

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