Quantum Mechanics Oxford University

Both Binney and this course are the real thing: Binney is a respected Astrophysicist, and this is the course of lectures you get on the subject if you study undergrad Physics at the UK's 2nd best uni. So, the following health warnings apply: 1. Expect to have to work (or at least think) hard if you want to get full value; 2. This is not for the faint-hearted, many of the students in the lecture theatre will (or may) go on to be professional physicists and need to actually understand how to do QM; 3. You will need to be good at Maths (A Level at least) - for example, understanding "e^i(theta)" type notation for complex numbers - or you won't be able to understand the detail.

The good news: you don't *have* to work hard, if you want to just watch without doing any other work you can get a lot from this; if you're roughly in the target audience (good at maths, probably either did study science at uni or could have) this is a full-strength, not dumbed-down, course on proper Physics.

Hard? Yes. Rewarding? Definitely.

First off, I'm not without bias -- I was an undergraduate in the first run of these lectures, a year before these recordings. At the time, I found it very difficult to understand the subject at all, and Binney seemed to only reconfirm my fears. However, year after year, I still find myself coming back to him: the knowledge contained in these lectures (and in his book) is definitive, well written, and in a modern notation. It's the basis of so much that it's really worth putting the effort into understanding everything properly, even if that task is far from easy.

Not for the faint hearted -- and if you don't know what a linear vector space is, you're probably going to find it a bit tough -- but fundamentally this is a very good place to start if you want to "understand" quantum mechanics. I'm just about to start watching the lectures for the second time, as Schrödinger equations have become relevant to my work again. Highly recommended.

Some may think I am being overly judgemental - but I think this professor cannot teach. I am saying this looking back at how my uni lecturers used to "teach" and it was the same. No explanation of the parts that really matter, e.g. some of the formulas he just seemed to pluck from thin air (to someone who is new to Quantum Mechanics, this is how they will feel), and simply said this is how you use it. There is no explanation as to WHY it is like that, a derivation, even a "I'll go through the proof another time or during practice classes, but just trust me for now." would do. The last thing that got my on my nerves and most certainly annoyed me back at uni, is he is stuttering constantly to make sure everything he says is "perfect" in his mind. I think it's some OCD thing all intellectual lecturers have. It also causes them to start a sentence and then before its even begun start another one to further expand. This together with looking down at the pages all the time and generally not looking like he has the passion to TEACH, but rather just giving a lecture to get his pay cheque, shows everything that's wrong with the education system in Britain today.

Rant off.