Quantum physics

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So far as i can see, it is algebra.

It was quite interesting, reading through some of the supporting material I found. In particular, the John Baez site seems worth a good look.

I (maybe) know no more than you about modern quantum theory. I stumbled through half of The Road to Reality. I must give that another try.

If you are genuinely interested in understanding the subject, I would expect you to follow up some of the information.

I was just flipping through my old textbook for the classes, it's about half algebra, half differential equations and integral & vector calculus.

I have only learned about quantum through popular books such as Brian Greene's as well as a course from The Teaching Company. I don't have the time to get very deep into it, but I felt I had a pretty good general grasp when I was studying it. Most of the oddities seemed as if they could just as easily be explained by some as yet unknown variables or what have you. This EPR paradox and Bell's inequality always seemed like the most definitive refutation of those notions, but I've never understood it well enough to decide one way or the other.

I thought maybe it was a simple algebraic or logical argument that I just hadn't comprehended yet, but apparently there is much more to it.

Even though it's mostly about visualizing the basic stuff, Brian Greene's work is a great way to introduce yourself to the subject. But there is much, much more behind it with some intense math (look up Hamiltonian Mechanics or Schroedinger's Equation to get a taste of the basic stuff).

I did some units of quantum mechanics at university. The maths was fairly difficult, made even more difficult with the constant rain of fresh symbols, its infinite nature, approximations I had trouble understanding, and the problem of being able to relate the stuff to the world we are familiar with. To the most part I treated it like pure maths.

The subject started at a time when the university had an "open week" and high school kids were coming to see what uni lectures were like. Some very young kids joined the quantum mechanics lecture and set up the front. They weren't even high school age, probably 11-12 years old. Stumbled in here by accident I thought.

Next lecture, no longer during open week, the kids were there again. Hmm, this was very strange, small children accidentally coming into a quantum mechanics lecture. They looked bored, occasionally scribbling in their notebooks (drawing pictures?) while the rest of the people there were attentive and struggling with trying to grasp what is going on. The third lecture they were there again so I sat next to them. I was paying attention to the lecturer who was sketching out some equation with some new symbols in it, I asked what the symbols were as I didn't even know what the greek names were, let alone their significance to the description of the problem we were solving. By the time I could work out what the equation even was, the kids next to me had already done the page and a half of math needed to solved them.

Children of the Quantum.

I hope they are having fun at CERN..