Cool Science

...is actually Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics. By a stroke of luck or fate or just pure quantum indeterminacy, I discovered that my father owned this book and he generously shared it with me and I can't stop reading it. Granted I'm slowing down rather badly around page 70 and I admit I have 'skipped to the end', but it's one amazing book, and will reveal quantum mechanics to you in so many ways that no one else will dare to match.

And to be candid, I'm a little mad and upset. Dirac explains fundamental things plainly and authoritatively that nobody, not any of the typical texts, bother to explain. It's as if all of my previous texts and profs have used this as a sort of secret text that they were worried we'd discover one day. If you read even the first 60-70 pages of Dirac you will not be disappointed and you'll really see the gorgeous reasoning behind his formulation of quantum mechanics.

I've written before that I'm worried that we have generally lost some understanding of quantum at the college level and after reading Dirac I might believe this even more strongly. I feel some temptation to re-imagine a course in which we would use only primary literature. Wouldn't it be cool to teach a class today in the 21'st century using only the beautiful monographs of Dirac and others?