In the course
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10 videos · 6 h 4 min
Explainer · YouTube
Up and Atom
A friendly, beginner-level tour in under ten minutes: what the wavefunction is, why atoms have energy levels, and what each piece of the equation means. Watch it first, then let the lesson take each symbol apart.
Explainer · YouTube
Welch Labs
Retraces how Schrödinger built his equation from de Broglie's matter waves, then uses animated simulations and complex exponentials to show what the i does: it makes the phase of ψ rotate in time. Watch after Part 2 to see the phase spin.
Explainer · YouTube
FloatHeadPhysics
The link starts at 'Where does i come from?' (29:30) and runs through the energy operator to 'Why does it resemble the heat equation (except the i)' (36:47), the same comparison section 2 makes with diffusion. To see the kinetic-energy operator assembled first, rewind to 17:07.
Explainer · YouTube
Looking Glass Universe
Five beginner-friendly minutes on what happens to a quantum state over time, with chapters running from Newtonian mechanics through conservation and time evolution to measurement. Its title names linearity, the property this section calls the master key.
Demo · YouTube
udiprod
A picture-first, animated demonstration of the simplest case, a free particle, with chapters on the observer effect (4:53), velocity (5:37) and the uncertainty principle (9:06). Watch it before section 6 treats the same free particle with equations.
Lecture · MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare
Allan Adams's MIT 8.04 lecture recaps the postulates of quantum mechanics so far, then works through the properties of the Schrödinger equation and how to solve it using energy eigenstates. For students who want the full university treatment.
Lecture · CU Boulder
Physics CU Boulder · Colin West
A centenary public lecture that assumes no background in maths or physics: Colin West sets Schrödinger's four 1926 papers against their historical backdrop, then unpacks the mathematical and physical innovations they contain. Watch it alongside this section's 'Four papers in six months' callout.
Lecture · Yale
YaleCourses · J. Michael McBride
McBride splits HΨ = EΨ into a potential part and a kinetic part, and shows that the kinetic part is read from the curvature of ψ, not from ½mv². From 33:24 he plays 'Jeopardy', working back from a guessed ψ to its potential: where ψ curves toward zero the kinetic energy is positive, where it curves away it is negative, which is this section's allowed-versus-forbidden picture.
Lecture · MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare · Barton Zwiebach
Zwiebach defines a stationary state as a product of a function of time and a function of space ('stationary is not the same as static'), shows that expectation values of time-independent observables do not change, and reaches Hψ = Eψ as an eigenfunction equation. He then shows that E must be real or the state could not stay normalized: the rigorous version of section 4.
Lecture · IHP
Institut Henri Poincaré · Michel Devoret
Michel Devoret, a 2025 physics Nobel laureate, presents the Yale experiment described in this section in a research talk. The link starts at how quantum jumps are observed (4:18), and the payoff is the jump caught mid-flight (34:42) and then reversed (43:20).