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The Strange Story of the Quantum. An Account for the General Reader of the Growth of the Ideas Underlying Our Present Atomic Knowledge
Non-mathematical but thorough explanation of work of Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Pauli, Heisenberg, Dirac, etc. "Of the books attempting an account of the history and contents of modern atomic physics . . . this is the best." — Henry Margenau, Professor of Physics, Yale University. "Postscript 1959."
285 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1959
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204 people want to read
About the author
Banesh Hoffmann
26 books10 followersBanesh Hoffmann studied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Oxford, where he earned his bachelor of arts and went on to earn his doctorate at Princeton University.
While at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Hoffmann collaborated with Einstein and Leopold Infeld on the classic paper Gravitational Equations and the Problem of Motion. Einstein’s original work on general relativity was based on two ideas. The first was the equation of motion: a particle would follow the shortest path in four-dimensional space-time. The second was how matter affects the geometry of space-time. What Einstein, Infeld, and Hoffmann showed was that the equation of motion followed directly from the field equation that defined the geometry (see main article).
In 1937 Hoffmann joined the mathematics department of Queens College, part of the City University of New York, where he remained till the late 1970s. He retired in the 1960s but continued to teach one course a semester — in the fall a course on quantum mechanics and in the spring one on the special and general theories of relativity.
He was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars and wrote the short story "Sherlock, Shakespeare, and the Bomb," published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in February 1966.
While at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Hoffmann collaborated with Einstein and Leopold Infeld on the classic paper Gravitational Equations and the Problem of Motion. Einstein’s original work on general relativity was based on two ideas. The first was the equation of motion: a particle would follow the shortest path in four-dimensional space-time. The second was how matter affects the geometry of space-time. What Einstein, Infeld, and Hoffmann showed was that the equation of motion followed directly from the field equation that defined the geometry (see main article).
In 1937 Hoffmann joined the mathematics department of Queens College, part of the City University of New York, where he remained till the late 1970s. He retired in the 1960s but continued to teach one course a semester — in the fall a course on quantum mechanics and in the spring one on the special and general theories of relativity.
He was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars and wrote the short story "Sherlock, Shakespeare, and the Bomb," published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in February 1966.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 1, 2012
The story of the discovery of quantum mechanics has now congealed into a stock narrative that is repeated ad nauseam with few changes in every introductory chemistry or physics textbook. Thus it was very refreshing to read this idiosyncratic account from before the stock narrative had quite taken hold. Hoffman attempts to do justice to Heisenberg and Dirac's approaches as well as Schrödinger's, something that never seems to be done nowadays in books for a popular audience. I think the attempt is almost wholly unsucessful - if you do not already know a fair deal about quantum mechanics you will have no idea - but making it is praiseworthy.
I liked Hoffman's style, but I expect it will grate on many people. He is given to a super-Chestertonian exuberance with metaphors that is rarely helpful.
I liked Hoffman's style, but I expect it will grate on many people. He is given to a super-Chestertonian exuberance with metaphors that is rarely helpful.
December 24, 2019
Hoffmann wrote this book in the late 1940s (I read the Pelican Book version, published in 1963. This contains a 1959 Postscript). The book is a systematic story telling of the early history of the quantum world that had some eye-opening explanations about what goes on at the atomic level. This book is close to a "5" on the Goodreads rating scale, but I am not confident enough in my understanding to give it that higher rating.
This is a book to be studied, not read. From what I can gather, the atomic-nuclear process is something like the following: Light (energy from the electro-magnetic spectrum) is added to electrons, which are now particles of higher levels of energy and, thus, matter. In this process, the photon loses its separate identity. It is now incorporated into the electron, which is the same electron as it was before, but now with more energy. The negatively charged electron then adds its energy to the proton in the nucleus (via the mysteriously short-lived positron which has the same mass as the electron but with a positive charge so that the energy levels and the +/- charges are balanced). (1) In this process, the electron, like the photon before, loses its identity in its merger with the proton. But the proton too, now in a balanced state with the electron, also becomes something different. It's now a neutron. (2) And when matter is transformed into light (energy), a reverse process occurs. When electrons move to a lower (outer ring?) orbit of energy, a photon is created and released and the atom has less energy. Presumably, this is preceded by the neutron reverting to a prior "protomic" (Hoffmann's adjective term for proton) state. (3)
What is interesting in this account is that the three main atomic components that most of us are familiar with (electrons, protons and neutrons in the nucleus) are not separate, fixed entities at all. "Electrons and positrons," Hoffmann writes, "are never inside the nucleus. They are external manifestations of jumps occurring within....the electrically charged proton and the electrically neutral neutron are actually one and the same particle." Thus, Hoffmann asserts, this "is how we must think of the nucleus."
But Hoffmann is not quite finished. he likens this in-and-out of existence -- from energy to matter and the reverse -- to the volleys of a tennis game. (4) Hoffman cautions that we "not think of this travel to and fro too literally," At this minutest quantum level of reality, the what of this exchange is neither energy nor particles, but "wavicles," or a "ghostly halo of electrons and neutrinos fluctuating uncertainly between existence and non-existence," an "electrical halo of wavicles" that is linked to Maxwell's electro-magnetic field."
And Hoffmann is not done in another sense. Electron movement (from one orbit to another?) involves a "fantastic oscillation," a "pulsation of identity," where part of electron A shares itself with electron B (in another orbit?) and vice versa, and a complete exchange with the electrons "then having definitely exchanged identities. The flow would now reverse, and the strange oscillation continues indefinitely." (5) This all involves electrons in the plural (an electron field?). Hoffmann also applies the oscillation to a single electron, but this is an observation that cannot be made because "the act of observation would so jolt the electrons that we would find either pure A or pure B, but never a combination." Rather, we can know only the "probabilities of finding either one." (6) Then, Hoffmann writes that it's an "awe-inspiring thought that you and I are thus rhythmically exchanging particles with one another, and with the earth and the beasts of the earth, and the sun and the moon and the stars, to the uttermost galaxy. "
Given the current debate about the separation of the micro-quantum world from the mega-cosmic world, it's noteworthy that Hoffmann, writing early on, sees more unity than division. He likens the photon-electron-proton-neutron interaction to the drop of water where all components cohere: "A striking instance of the power of exchange is seen in chemical valence, for it is essentially by means of these mysterious forces that atoms cling together, their outer electrons busily shuttling identity and position back and forth to weave a bond that knits the atoms into molecules." Later, in his epilogue, Hoffmann weaves these basic quantum phenomena into the whole of the material universe, including life, humans and their emotional life: "Deep down within the primal attributes of energy lay the rich promise of electrons and positrons, of protons, neutrons, mesons, and photons, of space and time and motion, of energy levels in nuclei and outside, of forces binding primary particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, and molecules into matter sustaining life and love and hate."
Then, also at the end of the epilogue, Hoffmann leaps beyond the material world and sees it, if I presume correctly, as a manifestation of the divine: "What little we understand of the deeper workings of the world is yet enough to reveal a sublime harmony beneath its turmoil and complexity....How much more...shall we marvel at the wondrous powers of God who created the heaven and the earth from a primal essence of such exquisite subtlety that with it he could fashion brains and minds afire with the divine gift of clairvoyance to penetrate his mysteries. If the mind of a mere Bohr or Einstein astounds us with its power, how may we begin to extol the glory of God who created them?"
But, Hoffmann concludes, we are walking a knife edge between the highest levels of technological sophistication and primitive barbarism. God preordains nothing. Which path we choose, Hoffmann writes, "is ours." But what Hoffmann doesn't address are those deepest-seated motivation factors that lie at the heart of our quantum self that may be more deterministic than what Hoffmann suggests. Technological sophistication and primitive barbarism are not distinct. The former is not enlightenment. Rather its use can be applied for the good of the whole or for the good of the self at the expense of the whole. It depends, in the end, on who we are, and that depends on inner, inborn character as well as the situations that mold that character after birth. Some want the good of the whole. Some want it only for themselves. These are the lessons of what we see now, and what we have seen throughout history. The strife between love and hate in human life is and will always be permanent.
(1) Regarding this issue of balance (i.e., "electrically neutral,"), Hoffmann makes it clear that balance is tied up with the tiny expression of the neutrino, but I didn't understand that part of his discussion.
(2) "When an electron merged with a proton there would be a jump in the proton's state of energy and charge, and the electron would be no more. Proton-plus-electron would not be some new composite particle. It would be just the same old proton as before, but in a new state of energy and charge; the same old proton but not electrically neutral, for the electronic and protonic charges exactly balance; the same old proton, but we would call it now a neutron."
(3) Other than spontaneous radioactivity, I don't understand what causes this reverse, shedding of energy, process. Is it that heat-energy naturally loses energy? Is it that a cool environment draws heat away?
(4) "Now a neutron can become a proton by shedding an electron and a neutrino, and a proton can become a neutron by absorbing them. Thus the interchange of place between a proton and a neutron can be pictured as a sort of tossing to and fro between them of an electron and a neutrino, as in a long, fast rally in tennis. The neutron serves, and in serving becomes a proton. The original proton receives, and in receiving becomes a neutron. It at once returns the serve, and so reverts to its proton state while converting its opponent back into the neutron state. The effect of such a rally
is a rhythmic alternation in which at one moment we have a neutron on this side of the net and a proton on that, the next moment a proton here and a neutron there, and so on back and forth."
(5) Hoffmann has this exchange regulated by the Heisenberg exclusion principle, but I am not clear, here, how this works.
(6) I am quoting him and believe he is referring to the inability to locate an electron's position and momentum" at the same time, but the more I read the description here, the less clear this seems to me.
This is a book to be studied, not read. From what I can gather, the atomic-nuclear process is something like the following: Light (energy from the electro-magnetic spectrum) is added to electrons, which are now particles of higher levels of energy and, thus, matter. In this process, the photon loses its separate identity. It is now incorporated into the electron, which is the same electron as it was before, but now with more energy. The negatively charged electron then adds its energy to the proton in the nucleus (via the mysteriously short-lived positron which has the same mass as the electron but with a positive charge so that the energy levels and the +/- charges are balanced). (1) In this process, the electron, like the photon before, loses its identity in its merger with the proton. But the proton too, now in a balanced state with the electron, also becomes something different. It's now a neutron. (2) And when matter is transformed into light (energy), a reverse process occurs. When electrons move to a lower (outer ring?) orbit of energy, a photon is created and released and the atom has less energy. Presumably, this is preceded by the neutron reverting to a prior "protomic" (Hoffmann's adjective term for proton) state. (3)
What is interesting in this account is that the three main atomic components that most of us are familiar with (electrons, protons and neutrons in the nucleus) are not separate, fixed entities at all. "Electrons and positrons," Hoffmann writes, "are never inside the nucleus. They are external manifestations of jumps occurring within....the electrically charged proton and the electrically neutral neutron are actually one and the same particle." Thus, Hoffmann asserts, this "is how we must think of the nucleus."
But Hoffmann is not quite finished. he likens this in-and-out of existence -- from energy to matter and the reverse -- to the volleys of a tennis game. (4) Hoffman cautions that we "not think of this travel to and fro too literally," At this minutest quantum level of reality, the what of this exchange is neither energy nor particles, but "wavicles," or a "ghostly halo of electrons and neutrinos fluctuating uncertainly between existence and non-existence," an "electrical halo of wavicles" that is linked to Maxwell's electro-magnetic field."
And Hoffmann is not done in another sense. Electron movement (from one orbit to another?) involves a "fantastic oscillation," a "pulsation of identity," where part of electron A shares itself with electron B (in another orbit?) and vice versa, and a complete exchange with the electrons "then having definitely exchanged identities. The flow would now reverse, and the strange oscillation continues indefinitely." (5) This all involves electrons in the plural (an electron field?). Hoffmann also applies the oscillation to a single electron, but this is an observation that cannot be made because "the act of observation would so jolt the electrons that we would find either pure A or pure B, but never a combination." Rather, we can know only the "probabilities of finding either one." (6) Then, Hoffmann writes that it's an "awe-inspiring thought that you and I are thus rhythmically exchanging particles with one another, and with the earth and the beasts of the earth, and the sun and the moon and the stars, to the uttermost galaxy. "
Given the current debate about the separation of the micro-quantum world from the mega-cosmic world, it's noteworthy that Hoffmann, writing early on, sees more unity than division. He likens the photon-electron-proton-neutron interaction to the drop of water where all components cohere: "A striking instance of the power of exchange is seen in chemical valence, for it is essentially by means of these mysterious forces that atoms cling together, their outer electrons busily shuttling identity and position back and forth to weave a bond that knits the atoms into molecules." Later, in his epilogue, Hoffmann weaves these basic quantum phenomena into the whole of the material universe, including life, humans and their emotional life: "Deep down within the primal attributes of energy lay the rich promise of electrons and positrons, of protons, neutrons, mesons, and photons, of space and time and motion, of energy levels in nuclei and outside, of forces binding primary particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, and molecules into matter sustaining life and love and hate."
Then, also at the end of the epilogue, Hoffmann leaps beyond the material world and sees it, if I presume correctly, as a manifestation of the divine: "What little we understand of the deeper workings of the world is yet enough to reveal a sublime harmony beneath its turmoil and complexity....How much more...shall we marvel at the wondrous powers of God who created the heaven and the earth from a primal essence of such exquisite subtlety that with it he could fashion brains and minds afire with the divine gift of clairvoyance to penetrate his mysteries. If the mind of a mere Bohr or Einstein astounds us with its power, how may we begin to extol the glory of God who created them?"
But, Hoffmann concludes, we are walking a knife edge between the highest levels of technological sophistication and primitive barbarism. God preordains nothing. Which path we choose, Hoffmann writes, "is ours." But what Hoffmann doesn't address are those deepest-seated motivation factors that lie at the heart of our quantum self that may be more deterministic than what Hoffmann suggests. Technological sophistication and primitive barbarism are not distinct. The former is not enlightenment. Rather its use can be applied for the good of the whole or for the good of the self at the expense of the whole. It depends, in the end, on who we are, and that depends on inner, inborn character as well as the situations that mold that character after birth. Some want the good of the whole. Some want it only for themselves. These are the lessons of what we see now, and what we have seen throughout history. The strife between love and hate in human life is and will always be permanent.
(1) Regarding this issue of balance (i.e., "electrically neutral,"), Hoffmann makes it clear that balance is tied up with the tiny expression of the neutrino, but I didn't understand that part of his discussion.
(2) "When an electron merged with a proton there would be a jump in the proton's state of energy and charge, and the electron would be no more. Proton-plus-electron would not be some new composite particle. It would be just the same old proton as before, but in a new state of energy and charge; the same old proton but not electrically neutral, for the electronic and protonic charges exactly balance; the same old proton, but we would call it now a neutron."
(3) Other than spontaneous radioactivity, I don't understand what causes this reverse, shedding of energy, process. Is it that heat-energy naturally loses energy? Is it that a cool environment draws heat away?
(4) "Now a neutron can become a proton by shedding an electron and a neutrino, and a proton can become a neutron by absorbing them. Thus the interchange of place between a proton and a neutron can be pictured as a sort of tossing to and fro between them of an electron and a neutrino, as in a long, fast rally in tennis. The neutron serves, and in serving becomes a proton. The original proton receives, and in receiving becomes a neutron. It at once returns the serve, and so reverts to its proton state while converting its opponent back into the neutron state. The effect of such a rally
is a rhythmic alternation in which at one moment we have a neutron on this side of the net and a proton on that, the next moment a proton here and a neutron there, and so on back and forth."
(5) Hoffmann has this exchange regulated by the Heisenberg exclusion principle, but I am not clear, here, how this works.
(6) I am quoting him and believe he is referring to the inability to locate an electron's position and momentum" at the same time, but the more I read the description here, the less clear this seems to me.
Want to read
February 17, 2013Page 71: "If you have read thus far, there is no dignified way of escape left to you. You have paid your fare, and climbed to the highest peak of the roller-coaster. You have therefore let yourself in for the inevitable consequences. It is no use trying to back out. You had warning in the preface of what to expect, and if contemplation of the heights there described now makes you giddy and apprehensive, I cannot accept responsibility."
August 4, 2012
Explained qm better than any of my degree course textbooks. After reading it, I was able to make sense of them.
May 4, 2013
Very good telling of the history of quantum mechanics without that math. The author gave some good examples but really could you more, or more diagrams or pictures of concepts.
October 20, 2015
Nobody ever told me (well, nobody has still ever really tried to tell me) what exactly calculus is, and what it's for. I've sort of learned something about it, in tiny pieces, always by accident. And now I read this book, and I think, gee, I could totally get into calculus if I had a good teacher now, and if I could always keep the quantum story, as told in this book, in front of me while I did it, to keep me interested. Because I've read so many books now, written in several decades, explaining this story in story form, and I like hearing it that way rather than just always reading textbooks and trying to fit pieces of the story into problems to practice solving. And this particular book tells the story that I feel the need to know and be excited about in order to care about learning calculus. I don't think I have time at the moment to start, but maybe someday. And I'd get this book and make my kids read it so they could have a hope of understanding the excitement too. I learned the science all through school and thought it was okay (it's a lot more interesting the older I get) but the connections to the math were never made. I could do the math, and at least as far as algebra is now relevant to my life, but after reading this book I see that learning math by learning the science is the way I at least would prefer to learn it.
June 8, 2015
A good introduction. Originally published in 1947 with a postscript written in 1959, the book still serves as a useful introduction of the development of quantum theory. Progress in optics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, and atomic theory in the 19th and early 20th centuries explain how quantum theory arose. While the material covered is often dense, Hoffman writes with wit and uses easy-to-identify metaphors that make it easier for readers to at least superficially understand the concepts he describes. The Epilogue and Postscript are mainly devoted to the discoveries of new particles such as neutrinos and mesons after quantum theory solidified its validity in the 1930s. Rarely boring.
December 23, 2010
Ce livre raconte l'histoire de l'émergence de la physique quantique au tournant du 20e siècle à travers ses "héros": Planck, Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, Heinsenberg... le style humoristique d'Hoffman allège un sujet plutôt difficile d'approche et met en lumière les incroyables paradoxes et curieux phénomènes propres au monde quantique. Pour ceux qui ont aimé les ouvrages de Brian Greene et de Stephen Hawkins, ce livre, malgré son âge, saura vous faire découvrir tout ce que la physique moderne a de plus fantastique.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews