#116 overall
8.04 Quantum Physics I
MIT OpenCourseWare
3 recommenders · 4 threads · recommended in 4 years, 2018–2025 · score 3.8
MIT OpenCourseWare's undergraduate introduction to quantum physics, covering the foundations of quantum mechanics. Two versions of the course, taught by different professors, are available.
Commenters call it an excellent introduction to quantum physics, with one recommending both professors' versions and another praising its clear analogies.
Science & Engineeringintermediatefreevideo lectures#quantum mechanics#undergraduate physics#mit ocw#video lectures
Recommendations by year
20062026
I study at Universität Leipzig, in their international physics studies program. It's a fairly rigorous program and you are expected to learn a lot on your own outside of class, which is actually how I prefer it. I can definitely recommend it if you are the kind of person who can learn yourself. I see the classes as more of a guide of what to study and you expand on that yourself outside of class.
I'm getting another bachelors as I didn't feel that my finance degree taught me enough to jump into a physics masters (and I was right, there's a lot to be learned in undergrad math and physics). In undergrad you won't necessarily get into specialized stuff like quantum computing, but you will take the basic experimental and theoretical QM courses that can help prepare for something like that in a masters program. So I'm not sure I can recommend anything on that yet.
MIT has a few excellent courses on quantum physics. They have two versions of their 8.04 taught by two different professors and I highly recommend both. Then they have their advanced quantum physics 8.05 out there as well, which I also highly recommend. If you have the discipline to do the problem sets then you will learn quite a bit.
I found a fantastic intro lecture on Quantum Physics[1] (Superposition) on MIT OpenCourseWare that absolutely blew my mind. The professor (Adams) does a fantastic job using cute little analogies of color and hardness boxes with inputs and outputs of electrons with little monkeys inside.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc
MIT OCW physics--start with 'For the love of physics' then don't mention that video series again because it will get you cancelled. Then you can take MIT's quantum course. From there, PIRSA has a bunch of video courses available that will prepare you for theoretical physics. You'll need calc 1-2(3), linear algebra, differential equations, discrete math, real and complex analysis, and mathematical physics, which may include the discrete math and complex analysis as my coursework did. You'll need to read Alice in Wonderland and Through the looking glass, at least for cultural references. Most of what you need will be between PIRSA and MIT OCW. Khan Academy can help if you're not getting calc, but with CS you probably already have calc 1-diff eq and linear algebra.
I would suggest starting from the basics of quantum physics if you don't already have a solid foundation. MIT has several excellent courses on the subject [1-4]. The first two are the same course, but taught by different professors with slightly different curriculum.
[1] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-s...
[2] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-s...
[3] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-05-quantum-physics-ii-...
[4] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-06-quantum-physics-iii...
The quantum mechanics stuff misses EPR & Bell's theorem, which roughly says that the probabilities in quantum mechanics are essential. Experimental confirmation of this won the Noble Prize last year. Feynman famously counseled one of the winners not to work on it, as Feynman thought it wasn't interesting.
It also misses quantum seeing in the dark and the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester. In the two slit experiment, if you detect a particle where there's supposed to be a node, this means one of the slits is blocked. So, you can detect that one of the slits is blocked from a particle that went through the other slit.
A good modern textbook is Mastering Quantum Mechanics by Barton Zwiebach of MIT. His courses on MITx and open courseware are really great.
Edit: Also, all of computational physics.
For the last few years I've had the Feynman Lectures [1,2] sitting in my queue, and I've finally gotten around to starting them in the last week. It's been a fun ride so far, and it's been nice to have the time to digest the lessons without having to run off somewhere. It's also helped to have the MIT OCW lectures as a reference [3], in which I found a book title "Quantum Mechanics and Experience" [4] that I started reading as well and so far has been the most down-to-earth introduction to Quantum Mechanics that I've found. I highly recommend it.
[1] https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed-set/dp...
[3] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-s...
[4] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674741137/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...