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10 videos · 3 h 52 min
Course · MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare · Barton Zwiebach · 2013
The sequel: vector spaces and Dirac notation, the uncertainty principle done properly, the Heisenberg picture, two-state systems, tensor products and the addition of angular momentum. The natural next step once Unit 3 of this course feels comfortable.
Lecture · MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare · Barton Zwiebach
A ten-minute segment of MIT 8.04 (Spring 2016) that defines the Δ precisely: the standard deviation of an observable in a given state, built from expectation values. It is this section's ensemble definition on the blackboard, a property of the state rather than of any one blurry measurement.
Lecture · MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare · Barton Zwiebach
MIT 8.05, the lecture after the one in the Lecture Hall. It opens on the energy-time relation, read as this section reads it: Δt is how fast a state can change, not a spread of clock readings. Zwiebach then uses the uncertainty principle to put a floor under a ground-state energy, section 6's argument made rigorous. The second half, on diagonalizing operators, is chapter 14 material.
Lecture · MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare · Allan Adams · 2013
The lecture from MIT 8.04 Quantum Physics I (Allan Adams, 2013) that goes with Chapter 8. The whole course is in the Lecture Hall.
Course · MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare · Allan Adams · 2013
Allan Adams' celebrated course starts from superposition and the experimental facts, builds the wavefunction, operators and the Schrödinger equation, then tours scattering, hydrogen, identical particles and band structure before closing on entanglement and Bell's theorem. Calculus and a little linear algebra are enough to keep up.
Explainer · YouTube
TED-Ed
Chad Orzel's animated TED-Ed lesson sets up the whole session in under five minutes: you can never pin down an object's exact position and exact speed together, because everything behaves as both a particle and a wave. Watch for the wave argument at its heart, which Parts 2 and 3 turn into precise mathematics.
Explainer · YouTube
3Blue1Brown
Grant Sanderson shows that the uncertainty principle is a general fact about Fourier transforms long before it is a fact about particles: a brief sound has no crisp pitch, and Doppler radar must trade sharp range against sharp speed. The quantum chapter starts at about 10:24. Watch it beside Part 3 and the lab's wave builder.
Explainer · Fermilab
Fermilab
Fermilab's Don Lincoln traces the principle to the wave nature of matter and the link between wavelength and momentum, with Fourier pictures of square and bell-shaped pulses. A good second pass on Parts 2 and 3, and on this chapter's central claim that the limit lives in the wave, not in the instruments.
Demo · YouTube
Veritasium
Section 1's single slit in four minutes: a laser shone through a slit that is made narrower and narrower. Watch what the spot on the screen does as the slit closes, and connect it to slit width times sideways momentum spread ≈ h. The description calls the principle a limit on measuring; section 2 sharpens that into a property of the state.
Explainer · YouTube
Sabine Hossenfelder
The jump lands on her chapter 'Is Uncertainty All About Waves?', the question this section answers with Fourier's bargain; 'What's Quantum About It?' (9:02) then asks what quantum mechanics adds. Compare her answer with the lesson's: p = ħk turns a fact about every wave into a fact about momentum. Rewind to 2:00 for what quantum uncertainty means.