More Than One Mystery: Explorations in Quantum Interference

By Mark P. Silverman

Book Overview

Softcover Repri

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0387943765
• ISBN13: 9780387943763
• Release Date: August 1970
• Publisher: Springer New York
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Essays in Quantum Interference

Mark P. Silverman's "More Than One Mystery", in much the same manner as his treatment of optics in "Waves and Grains" written a few years later, is a series of discrete but interrelated essays on different aspects of quantum interference. The treatment is semi-technical, with analyses of the math supporting the various experiments and their interpretations. Speaking as one with no math background at all and no formal training in physics, I still found this book fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable. Silverman is something of a polymath, with wide-ranging interests, and he succeeds in bringing together concepts from different fields of study in unexpected but very fruitful ways. He surely must be a wonderful classroom teacher; his enthusiasm for his subject matter is contagious, and to say that his use of language in his writing is masterful is an understatement. Formerly a journalist, he is always engaging, and never dry. Throughout, his descriptions are a model of clarity, and the precision of his vocabulary in the simplest nontechnical sentences is awe-inspiring in its elegance. This is not a textbook, but any serious student of physics who doesn't own a copy is missing out on an important book.Much of this same material is presented for a general readership in his 2002 "A Universe of Atoms, An Atom in the Universe", a revision of the now out-of-print "And Yet It Moves: Strange Systems and Subtle Questions in Physics".