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Title: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by Linus Pauling ISBN: 0-486-64871-0 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 March, 1985 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Oldie but goodie
Comment: This is a great, simple presentation of the Schroedinger viewpoint. There is no Dirac representation and no matrix mechanics. However, there is much to be liked about this book and it is a pleasure to read. Those who are baffled completely by quantum mechanics will find this an enlightening introduction and a simple understandable place to start. This is another one of those lesser known gems.
Rating: 5
Summary: Simple with everything
Comment: If you are an undergraduate and you want everything you need, this is the book. The lack of matrix mechanics makes this book unsuitable for serious graduate students, though. I think it would actually be best for 1st or 2nd year serious undergraduate chemists who are well acquainted with differential equations.
Rating: 5
Summary: Richly historical account of molecular quantum mechanics
Comment: In many ways, this is still my favourite quantum mechanics text. Why? Because the text is completely grounded in the quantum mechanics of atoms and molecules.
Historically, Linus Pauling spent his post-doc working throughout Europe where he absorbed the, then, new theory of quantum mechanics. However, the physicists that he learnt q.m. from only analysed the physics of, relatively simple, atomic systems. It would require someone with an immense breadth of knowledge in chemistry to make quantum mechanics come alive for molecules. This was Linus Pauling. Pauling first applied q.m. to such diverse topics as: the chemical bond, resonance energy, electronegativity, crystal structure of molecules and hydrogen bonds.
And it shows. The uniqueness of this q.m. textbook is that it gives immensely detailed references to the different ways the early physicists/chemists attacked the q.m. of bonds in molecules. Many different ansatz's and approximations to pertubation problems are given. And Pauling should know, for he was right in the thick of it. The historical value of these references alone is worth the price of this book. It's a real shame that most modern books leave these out, because a discussion of these approximations methods give a lot of insight to q.m. in molecules.
In contrast, I find modern textbooks on physical chemistry to be often lacking in deep physical insight. However, textbooks written by physicists run into all sorts of esoteric directions like quantum entanglement and the uncertainty principle and as a previous reviewer noted, Pauling's books says nothing about scattering and hardly anything on spin. This is probably because chemists aren't interested in what happens to particles in beams or Stern-Gerlach experiments. They are more interested in ionisation energy, enthalpies and bond energies.
Nevertheless, for out-and-out modern-day quantum physicists, Pauling's explanation of aspects of quantum mechanics will seem quaint, overly pictorial and concrete, e.g. discussion of *actual* orbits. And it is. However, for chemists and even atomic physicists, pondering such esoteric questions clouds the immense power of quantum mechanics in explaining the detailed properties of atoms and molecules.
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Title: General Chemistry by Linus Pauling ISBN: 0486656225 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 May, 1988 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics/Two Volumes in One by Frederick W. Byron, W. Fuller Robert ISBN: 048667164X Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 August, 1992 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Quantum Theory by David Bohm ISBN: 0486659690 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 June, 1989 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory by W. Heisenberg ISBN: 0486601137 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 June, 1930 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Group Theory and Chemistry by David M. Bishop ISBN: 0486673553 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 January, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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