Animated Introductions to Quantum Mechanics: From Schrödinger’s Cat to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

If you nev­er quite got a hang of quan­tum mechan­ics, you can take anoth­er run at it by watch­ing four ani­mat­ed Ted-Ed primers, cre­at­ed by Chad Orzel, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Physics and Astron­o­my at Union Col­lege. He’s also the author of How to Teach Quan­tum Physics to Your Dog. In Par­ti­cles and waves: The cen­tral mys­tery of quan­tum mechan­ics (above), Orzel briefly traces the con­cep­tu­al devel­op­ment of quan­tum mechan­ics, high­light­ing the con­tri­bu­tions of physi­cists like Max Planck, Niels Bohr and Louis de Broglie.

Next up, Orzel tack­les the famous thought exper­i­ment known as Schrödinger’s cat, devised, of course, by the Nobel-prize win­ning Aus­tri­an physi­cist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. For anoth­er primer on this top­ic, you should also check out this les­son pre­sent­ed by Six­ty Sym­bols, a web site spe­cial­iz­ing in physics and astron­o­my videos host­ed by The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham. The two remain­ing videos in Orzel’s series appear below.

Ein­stein’s bril­liant mis­take: Entan­gled states

What is the Heisen­berg Uncer­tain­ty Prin­ci­ple?

via Ted-ED

Relat­ed Con­tent:

64 Free Online Physics Cours­es

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly Online

Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

“Do Sci­en­tists Pray?”: A Young Girl Asks Albert Ein­stein in 1936. Ein­stein Then Responds.

New Archive Puts 1000s of Einstein’s Papers Online, Includ­ing This Great Let­ter to Marie Curie