The Teaching of Quantum Mechanics

This World Wide Web page written by Dan Styer, Oberlin College Physics Department;
http://www.oberlin.edu/physics/dstyer/TeachQM/;
last updated 12 September 2022.

These World Wide Web pages present tips and techniques that I have found useful in teaching junior-senior level quantum mechanics courses.

My qualifications. Knowing my background and experience will give you an idea of whether my thoughts will be useful to you.
Textbook descriptions, including references to reviews.
Supplement descriptions, for readings that you might want to assign in addition to a textbook.
Software reviews.
Feynman's QED. Tips about using my favorite supplement. (Indeed, my favorite book about science.)
Thoughts on the first semester junior-level quantum mechanics course.
Tips on teaching quantal time development.
Tips on the visualization of quantum mechanics.
Tips on teaching quantal mechanics as a general audience course.
Making Sense of What's Not Common Sense, talk given at the June 2002 Gordon Conference on "Physics Research and Education: Quantum Mechanics".

In the flood of details, it is often hard to remember that the three characteristic traits of quantum mechanics are probability, interference, and entanglement.

Probability in quantum mechanics is neither more nor less difficult than probability in any other area.
Every teacher of quantum mechanics should be aware of the following four resources, which give exquisite experimental evidence for quantal interference:
- A. Tonomura, J. Endo, T. Matsuda, T. Kawasaki, and H. Ezawa, "Demonstration of single-electron buildup of an interference pattern", American Journal of Physics, 57 (1989) 117-120.
- The movies of the experimental results described above.
- R. Gahler and A. Zeilinger, "Wave-optical experiments with very cold neutrons", American Journal of Physics, 59 (1991) 316-324.
- Olaf Nairz, Markus Arndt, and Anton Zeilinger, "Quantum interference experiments with large molecules", American Journal of Physics, 71 (2003) 319-325.
Different teachers and different texts vary considerably in the question of how and whether to treat entanglement. Textbooks often give little help. If you do wish to treat entanglement, I recommend these articles:
- N.D. Mermin "Is the moon there when nobody looks? Reality and the quantum theory", Physics Today, 38(4) (April 1985) 38-47.
- P.G. Kwiat and L. Hardy, "The mystery of the quantum cakes", American Journal of Physics, 68 (2000) 33-36.

"Introduction to Quantum Physics", by Kerman, Sartori, and Taylor, was written in 1968 but is still a stunningly innovate approach to quantum physics.

It is not surprising that I also recommend perusing the article:

Daniel F. Styer, "Common misconceptions regarding quantum mechanics", American Journal of Physics, 64 (1996) 31-34, 1202.

(If you have the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software, then you may read the above article by clicking on its title. It is posted here with permission from the American Journal Physics. Copyright 1996, American Association of Physics Teachers. It may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission from the author and the American Association of Physics Teachers. This posted version has been modified slightly from the version that appeared in the American Journal of Physics.)