I had a great high school physics teacher back in the '70s, and felt pretty confident about my ability to understand Newtonian physics. We covered a lot of material, and it happened that the material fit in very well with the math courses I was taking. Maybe that wasn't a coincidence; I don't remember. Mr. Hart did let us know that Newton's laws did not explain everything; that at a very small scale, he was wrong in some respects.
Having a finite time left on Earth I am pretty sure I am not going to earn a Ph.D. in particle physics. But I actually am an intelligent laywoman; and I've read some of the popular writing on cosmology and other fields. I butt up hard against my intellectual limitations, though. I know enough to get the subtler jokes on "The Big Bang Theory," which I've just discovered.
My question is, if I was serious about understanding quantum mechanics, where would I go from having a) a pretty good grasp on Newtonian physics and b) an OK understanding of other broad categories of physics and c) trig, differential calculus and some integral calculus.
Where do I go from here? I've read popular literature, have heard the analogies (raisin cakes, steaming coffee cups, etc.) but how can I proceed to develop a better understanding?
I used to write and edit science stories in the popular media and did great with planetary science. But then I interviewed a local cosmologist who was getting a lot of ink and had a very hard time forming a coherent newspaper story.
I've read quite a few books ("Where Does the Weirdness Go" was good) and can't remember all the titles, but what would I do if I wanted to get beyond the metaphors?
BTW I teach middle school and high school math. I'm chiefly a word person, but have really come to enjoy working with small groups of students on middle and high school topics. This summer I will play around with trigonometry and brush up on calculus. But that's as high as I expect to get - not even upper-division college math.
Having a finite time left on Earth I am pretty sure I am not going to earn a Ph.D. in particle physics. But I actually am an intelligent laywoman; and I've read some of the popular writing on cosmology and other fields. I butt up hard against my intellectual limitations, though. I know enough to get the subtler jokes on "The Big Bang Theory," which I've just discovered.
My question is, if I was serious about understanding quantum mechanics, where would I go from having a) a pretty good grasp on Newtonian physics and b) an OK understanding of other broad categories of physics and c) trig, differential calculus and some integral calculus.
Where do I go from here? I've read popular literature, have heard the analogies (raisin cakes, steaming coffee cups, etc.) but how can I proceed to develop a better understanding?
I used to write and edit science stories in the popular media and did great with planetary science. But then I interviewed a local cosmologist who was getting a lot of ink and had a very hard time forming a coherent newspaper story.
I've read quite a few books ("Where Does the Weirdness Go" was good) and can't remember all the titles, but what would I do if I wanted to get beyond the metaphors?
BTW I teach middle school and high school math. I'm chiefly a word person, but have really come to enjoy working with small groups of students on middle and high school topics. This summer I will play around with trigonometry and brush up on calculus. But that's as high as I expect to get - not even upper-division college math.
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