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Reddit mentions of QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

Sentiment score: 12
Reddit mentions: 30

We found 30 Reddit mentions of QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Here are the top ones.

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
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Found 30 comments on QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter:

u/LRE · 8 pointsr/exjw

Random selection of some of my favorites to help you expand your horizons:

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a great introduction to scientific skepticism.

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is a succinct refutation of Christianity as it's generally practiced in the US employing crystal-clear logic.

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor by Anthony Everitt is the best biography of one of the most interesting men in history, in my personal opinion.

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski is a jaw-dropping book on history, journalism, travel, contemporary events, philosophy.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great tome about... everything. Physics, history, biology, art... Plus he's funny as hell. (Check out his In a Sunburned Country for a side-splitting account of his trip to Australia).

The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland is a thorough primer on art history. Get it before going to any major museum (Met, Louvre, Tate Modern, Prado, etc).

Not the Impossible Faith by Richard Carrier is a detailed refutation of the whole 'Christianity could not have survived the early years if it weren't for god's providence' argument.

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman are six of the easier chapters from his '63 Lectures on Physics delivered at CalTech. If you like it and really want to be mind-fucked with science, his QED is a great book on quantum electrodynamics direct from the master.

Lucy's Legacy by Donald Johanson will give you a really great understanding of our family history (homo, australopithecus, ardipithecus, etc). Equally good are Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade and Mapping Human History by Steve Olson, though I personally enjoyed Before the Dawn slightly more.

Memory and the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel gives you context for all the Bible stories by detailing contemporaneous events from the Levant, Italy, Greece, Egypt, etc.

After the Prophet by Lesley Hazleton is an awesome read if you don't know much about Islam and its early history.

Happy reading!

edit: Also, check out the Reasonable Doubts podcast.

u/Prayden · 7 pointsr/chemistry

Anything by Feynmann are great reads. For upper division instrumental analysis, spectroscopy, and quantum I wholly recommend QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman et al. It describes all the concepts in the book in layman's terms in a brilliant narrative of chemistry. I recommend it to anyone that wants to learn about the strangeness of physics and chemistry. It is easy to digest.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics, although pricey helped me survive physics (I have the paperbacks). It seems you can read the entirety online at that site.

If you choose to do a lot of organic chemistry laboratory work then Advanced Practical Organic Chemistry is a really great resource. It covers just about everything you need to know to be very competent and safe in the lab. I found a used copy of the second edition that has served me well. I don't know what has been updated in the third edition.

I agree with /u/lmo2th Pauling has written albeit old but definitive books on chemistry. Although it can be very difficult to read and knowledge of differential equations is required, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry by Linus Pauling et al. was the most succinct book on the nitty gritty math of QM I found.

I recently graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry, it was difficult, but I loved every minute I spent in the lab doing research and can't imagine doing anything else. Edit: QED and Feynmann Lectures are great reads for lower division classes. Save the second two for if you decide on chemistry.

u/Fizil · 7 pointsr/askscience

I would highly recommend anyone interested in the details at a level the layman can understand pick up Richard Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Princeton-Science-Library/dp/0691125759

It is IMO the best physics book aimed at the layman I've ever encountered. It gives a very lucid and detailed explanation of why light behaves the way it does in our everyday world, given the quantum mechanical rules it operates under.

u/nobodyspecial · 6 pointsr/science

Shortly before he died, Feynman gave a series of lectures called QED at UCLA for the lay audience. In that lecture (available at Amazon QED ), he outlines some basic ideas that make quantum mechanics a lot less mysterious. As he is laying out his lecture, he says 4 things:

A) Light is a particle called a photon. No wave-paticle duality - it's a particle.
B) An electron travels from point to point.
C) A photon travels from point to point.
D) An electron has a finite probability to absorb and emit a photon.

With the exception of radioactivity and gravity, the last 3 rules build you a universe. He explains that the waviness we observe at the quantum level is merely a probability function being displayed in real space. He illustrates several common phenomena in terms of the 3 rules. He even explains the double-slit weirdness.

The reason he mattered was he was one of 3 men who won the Nobel for solving the normalization problem in QED. He knew his topic cold and he could explain it really, really well for the rest of us.

If you're at all interested in quantum weirdness, read his book - it clarifies a lot of ideas. I'm not the sharpest knife so I had te read it several times before I felt I had a handle on most of what he was saying. It's a small book covering big ideas.

u/rupert1920 · 3 pointsr/askscience

Quantum electrodynamics explains it using probability amplitudes. Rather than treating light as a particle that bounces off at a point where angle of incidence equals angle of reflection, it approaches it using a quantum mechanical approach incorporating the idea that light is also a wave.

Each point on the mirror acts as an absorption and emission surface, and each point can absorb light from the source and emit light towards the detector (angles don't have to be equal). Taking into wave-like nature of light though, there will be constructive and deconstructive interference between adjacent points. It turns out that there is greatest constructive interference for lights of all wavelength at the point where angle of incidence equals angle of reflection.

Since interference is wavelength dependent, you can selectively choose which colours would be preferred over others at certain angles by modifying the mirror surface - this is how diffraction grating works.

You can read more about it in Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.

u/AwkwardTurtle · 3 pointsr/askscience

If you're interested in physics, I'd check out Richard Feynman's QED.

It's a short book adapted from a series of lectures he gave on quantum electrodynamics. It's written and explained in such a way that someone with no physics or math background can get a huge amount out of the book.

u/redsledletters · 3 pointsr/TrueAtheism

Confrontational atheism: Testament: Memoir of the Thoughts and Sentiments of Jean Meslier

>"Know, then, my friends, that everything that is recited and practiced in the world for the cult and adoration of gods is nothing but errors, abuses, illusions, and impostures. All the laws and orders that are issued in the name and authority of God or the gods are really only human inventions…."

>"And what I say here in general about the vanity and falsity of the religions of the world, I don’t say only about the foreign and pagan religions, which you already regard as false, but I say it as well about your Christian religion because, as a matter of fact, it is no less vain or less false than any other.



Softer (much less confrontational) atheism: 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

>This unique approach to skepticism presents fifty commonly heard reasons people often give for believing in a God and then raises legitimate questions regarding these reasons, showing in each case that there is much room for doubt. Whether you're a believer, a complete skeptic, or somewhere in between, you'll find this review of traditional and more recent arguments for the existence of God refreshing, approachable, and enlightening.



Favorites non-fiction (or at least mostly non-fiction as time will tell) and not directly related to atheism: Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension and The Illustrated A Brief History of Time and the Universe in a Nutshell



Favorites fiction (also not directly atheist related): Treasure Island, and Hogfather: A Novel of Discworld



Atheism book I've tried to read and found to be over my head that's supposed to be the end-all-be-all: The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God

***

Currently reading and while enjoyable it's a bit tough to get, I've found myself re-reading pages regularly: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

u/mccoyn · 2 pointsr/science

These reality branches can add together, or even cancel out. This effects the probability of certain events occurring, which can be tested by repeating experiments.

I would try to explain it further, but I am sure I'll mess it up. I recommend QED, which is surprisingly easy to read.

u/airshowfan · 2 pointsr/AskEngineers

a. Stanford. But a lot of people who work with me did not go to big-name schools. UC Irvine, Iowa State, Oregon state, etc. Where I work, there's lots of UW. Where I used to work before that; lots of RPI and USC.

b. I got great grades in high school, but slipped a little bit in college. (This made my life difficult later. A good GPA makes it easier to be hired, and is practically necessary if you want a Masters, something that many many many engineers have today). Classes: I'm sure I'm not the first one to tell you this, but take all the math and physics you can. And try to learn some of this stuff outside of school (it can be more fun that way), pick up some books, try to get through the Feynman Lectures on Physics (or just Six Easy Pieces and QED to start off), some Martin Gardner, books like Euler's Gem, learn HTML, try your hand at programming, build LEGO robots... all that kind of stuff will make it easier to learn the stuff you need to learn to become an engineer.

u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/askscience

Schrodingers cat (from now on SC) is a thought experiment in the copenhagen interpretation of QM. This states that the state of a system is represented by a probability wave, and until we collapse the wave by observing it, it exists in multiple states.

No-one else understands it either and that isn't a joke. You can study it and learn how to use QM to make predictions via its equations, but that's about as far as it goes.

I personally do not use copenhagen interpretation, and have switched to many worlds interpretation. In this all states, pasts and futures exist but we only see one in our reality.

There's a good book by Feynman on QM. http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Princeton-Science-Library/dp/0691125759/ref=la_B000AQ47U8_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1346330121&sr=1-3

If you can't a book, start from , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics

u/GuitarGreg · 2 pointsr/electricians

Get this book, I think you would enjoy it and it would probably answer most (if not all) of your questions.

At a certain point you have to just accept that electricity behaves the way it does, just because it does. A lot of the way we talk about electricity is convention, or it makes general assumptions about the way electricity behaves that in most cases are well-founded, so you can get away with them. If you really start to dig, stuff can get weird.

If you want a glimpse of how strange reality can get, read this. It is not directly about electrons but it talks about light so there are some similarities. Plus Feynman is a great author.

u/dnew · 2 pointsr/atheism

> Could you help me understand this without the requirement of consciousness as a factor in the experiment?

Sure. It's not "interfering." You get the same pattern of bands as you would if it were a wave, but that doesn't make it a wave.

You know how probability works? The probability of A or B happening is the sum of the probabilities (roughly) and the probability of both happening is the product of the probabilities? QED works the same way, except the probabilities are two-dimensional. Thus, it looks like wave interference, because waves follow the same math.

http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Princeton-Science-Library/dp/0691125759/

It's nothing to do with consciousness. Indeed, since science has not determined precisely and measurably what consciousness is or how it works, why would you think there's anything to do with consciousness in the experiment? That's what Schrodinger's Cat is all about. Is the cat conscious enough to collapse the waveform? Is it your consciousness at the computer what is making the CPU work in your machine? Don't be silly, of course it isn't. Don't you think the computer would run the same way regardless of whether you were "observing" it?

The quantum eraser is about this: Not only can a particle "interfere" with particles that didn't exist at the same time as it did, but it can interfere or not depending on events that happen after you've already measured the particle. What has that to do with "consciousness"?

Instead of asking me to prove or explain why consciousness doesn't have anything to do with QED, why don't you try to explain how we build devices that can photograph individual atoms and their bonds without being able to even clearly define what consciousness is. It should then become obvious that consciousness doesn't come into the theory of quantum mechanics any more than angels are required to run a nuclear reactor.

By the way, even if QED did require some sort of "consciousness", what in the world does that have to do with requiring a deity? That makes even less sense than saying a failure of a prediction of evolution logically implies the existence of a deity.

If you want a fun fictional treatment:

http://www.amazon.com/Quarantine-Greg-Egan/dp/0061054232

u/bkanber · 2 pointsr/askscience

I'm just glad I could help. I would recommend for you the book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, which is a transcription of four lectures by Richard Feynman.

If you don't know who Richard Feynman is, he's one of the people who won a Nobel prize for the formulation of Quantum Electrodynamics (the interaction of photons with charged particles like electrons). But more importantly than that, Feynman was EXCELLENT at talking about science in a manner that laypeople can understand, without actually dumbing down the material. These lectures explain QED in straightforward English. I strongly recommend it, it's definitely worth the $12. Hopefully this book will be a jumping-off point to further learning for you (as it was for me). Enjoy!

u/curien · 2 pointsr/atheism

That the universe is governed by rules does not imply that it is determinate. If you think nature is determinate, I suggest you study some quantum mechanics. This book and these lectures on which it is based are great starting points.

u/aphysics · 2 pointsr/askscience

Yes, it's an approximation. This is evidenced by effects like the Lamb shift that cannot be explained with classical electrodynamics (e.g. Coulomb's law). One way of putting quantum electrodynamics (QED) is that two charged particles "communicate" with each other by exchanging photons, "telling" each other whether to come closer or farther apart, and by how much. If you're curious, I suggest reading Feynman's layman explanation.

u/shouldbebabysitting · 1 pointr/scifi

>Man, I've already told you. That answer to that question isn't compressible by me to you.

No, it is. It really is.


> It's Shadows of the Mind. Not the easiest read, but not the hardest either.

I'll pick it up. However from googling I think you have misinterpreted Penrose's quantum gravity.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-eye-quantum-gravity-interface/

It's a hypotheses as to why the wave function decoheres. That's a completely different issue than the effects.

I highly recommend Feynman's QED. If you have any desire to understand Quantum Mechanics, you will understand after reading it. It requires no math.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/ol/0691125759/ref=olp_tab_all

u/WillWeisser · 1 pointr/books

Personally, I think you would get great suggestions on /r/physics. But since you're here...

Since you seem like you're just dipping your toes in the water, you might want to start off with something basic like Hawking (A Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell).

I highly recommend Feynman's QED, it's short but there's really no other book like it. Anything else by Feynman is great too. I found this on Amazon and though I haven't read it, I can tell you that he was the greatest at explaining complex topics to a mass audience.

You'll probably want to read about relativity too, although my knowledge of books here is limited. Someone else can chime in, maybe. When I was a kid I read Einstein for Beginners and loved it, but that's a comic book so it might not be everyone's cup of tea.

If you really want to understand quantum mechanics and don't mind a little calculus (OK, a lot), try the textbook Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by Griffiths. Don't settle for hokey popular misconceptions of how QM works, this is the real thing and it will blow your mind.

Finally, the most recent popular physics book I read and really enjoyed was The Trouble with Physics by Smolin. It's ostensibly a book about how string theory is likely incorrect, but it also contains really great segments about the current state of particle physics and the standard model.

u/prajnadhyana · 1 pointr/atheism

QED: The strange theory of light and matter by Richard P. Feynman

http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Princeton-Science-Library/dp/0691125759

u/RainbowNowOpen · 1 pointr/ebooks

I can only find the Amazon Kindle version. :(

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691125759

u/InfanticideAquifer · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, yes, "most" of the paths involve the particle breaking lightspeed. I've never seen the path-integral formulation worked out for relativistic quantum mechanics... If I had to guess, I'd say that the unphysical speed > c paths don't contribute to the result even if they are included... but that's just a guess. This is a really good question. If you post in /r/AskScience or /r/AskPhysics someone will probably come along with a really complete answer.

A really good place to go from here would be Feynman's book QED, where he explain the path integral formalism without expecting any prerequisites. I'd call it a "semi-populariztion" type of book.

u/LFZUAB · 1 pointr/Physics

https://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/0691125759

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1420946331/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

The latter is at gutenberg.org as well. Good idea with some of the simpler and less creative gymnastics.

As far as philosophy's concerned, these two in particular are a bit classic. The less time is spent on dealing with and accepting experiments, the further into lala land of maths you go. None of these newer theories actually offer an answer and are creative proposals that all fall short of a physical description and process. QED by Feynman is entertaining and funny, and you won't find better explanations that doesn't discuss some mathematical idea, which means we've left the realm of philosophy and physics in a classical sense. Because saying the "maths works", so let's justify it with something that sound plausible is really starting to get old.

​

So this is perhaps "basic" and what you were asking for. But it may offer a grounding before exploring all the terms and ideas that can be referenced when calculating and wanting to make a prediction. Or a phenomenological argument that has little to do with experiments and well off into the fringes of physics regions. Phenomenology is not philosophy in this sense, it's an subjective argument based on own work and experience and is largely subjective and hinges on whatever idea it revolves around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(physics)

In HEP, predictions come after preliminary data, where application of theories and calculations are the "phenomena" and the experimental results with high statistical significance is the "horse". So to compete here you need a rumour mill and access to let's say 2-4 sigma results. Experiments are cool, hoping for something truly revealing, theory dealing with results and what it means gets boring with these speculations. Good luck finding an article that argues a problem.

u/sunnbeta · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

>To answer I guess it would be an unusual intentional altering of normal physical processes by some agent outside those processes. Or something, kind of hard to come up with one that fits everything.

That sounds like a good definition. I still don’t know how we (a) separate a natural event from one caused by an outside agent, whatever that is, and (b) how we can tell if claims of miracles are true or just made up. Like it would be a miracle if David Copperfield really transported himself, but he merely gives the illusion of doing this.

>To answer I guess it would be an unusual intentional altering of normal physical processes by some agent outside those processes. Or something, kind of hard to come up with one that fits everything.

What is the overwhelming evidence? I mean what is your very best bit of evidence? Or top 3, top 5, top 10...

At the end I know you take me up on some other sources, which I will provide, and a key learning of them is that it’s really hard to actually figure out real truths, to be really sure of things, and it’s very easy to fool yourself along the way. Just think that for many people, for a long time, even with overwhelming evidence of it being the case, it would have appeared that the sun/moon/stars moved around the earth, being at the center. But that would have been wrong. This is how careful you need to be before accepting things as true, because it’s very easy to fool yourself.

>Muhammed was the most obvious false prophet in history. Allah is capricious, even to muslims, arbitrarily allowing believers into heaven or not.

So what? How do we know God (if he exists) is even the “good guy”?

>Whether or not I picked the right one, I would not pick one so obviously wrong

What are you basing your notion of “wrong” on? Some subjective personal feeling about how God must be?

>Not all miracles are equivalent, and not all miracle accounts are equivalent.

I agree, some can be made up on the spot, others talking about for centuries. But which ones can you actually demonstrate to be true?

The link you provide gives no evidence outside of a circular argument based on Biblical accounts. Anyone can write down a claim in a book, that is still just a claim, not evidence of the claim.

>There are no physically possible options

You’re claiming to know. And maybe you’re even right, maybe there are no “physically possible” options whatever that means. Maybe there is a non-physical option. But the simple truth is we don’t know what that is (we can only take faith in some version of it, which again, is a horrible way to figure out truth).

>The appropriate answer is that we do know - no natural options are possible, therefore the origin is supernatural.

there are also a whole hell of a lot of “supernatural” options. Could be the Christian God, could be Allah, could be as George Carlin put it, some supernatural force that brought the universe as we know it into existence but doesn’t care about us at all (I think probably the most likely, to assume otherwise is very hubristic): https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/235413-something-is-wrong-here-war-disease-death-destruction-hunger-filth

>You think that the unscientific musings some people use to explain the origin of the laws of physics are somehow so robust that it becomes a scientific certainty that the laws of physics could not have changed since then? Is that what you're saying?

Just show me the evidence that they’ve changed and we can put this to bed.

>So I guess you prefer circular reasoning, or perhaps an infinite regression? Those are the only three options according to baron von munchhausen, so let me know what you choose before attacking axiomatic reasoning.

I already said it’s UNKNOWN. Maybe it’s an unknown supernatural force that set things in motion but isn’t conscious, doesn’t care. Maybe it’s an infinite regress we can’t understand. You are the one using circular arguments to state it must be a certain way. You even seem certain that Mohammed is a false prophet. Please go take your evidence for that to the Middle East because it would solve a lot of problems.

I see you think the Quran is disproven through contradictions. Maybe that’s one reason to question it, but I think the bigger problem is simply that it has not been proven because evidence hasn’t been provided to confirm it’s truth. It has to be accepted on faith that it is the word of God as given to Mohammed. Same problem with the Bible, it has to be taken on faith that it’s portraying real events (like the resurrection of Jesus).

Now for the information I offered, I would start with a short video and a commencement speech; https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

(He talks about pseudosciences and poor approaches to science, and please just realize that religious claims are like another order of magnitude more absurd when it comes to accepting them as true)

These both deal with the pitfalls we can succumb to and “fool ourselves”, and how difficult it is to really figure something out. If this interests you even slightly, I highly highly suggest this book: https://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/0691125759

Because he is able to describe the known (DEMONSTRATED) behavior of light and quantum mechanics, without using any equations, and tells you how it really is. The purpose of reading this (even just the first couple chapters) is to provide an understanding of the level of depth us humans have been able to go to in understanding the world around us, and help you put Biblical claims into context. The fact that Biblical claims come nowhere remotely close to fitting the most bare bones requirements that would be applied to saying a scientific theory is true, I know most theists dismiss as “well that’s because this is outside the realm of science” - but you’ve never demonstrated that! Again it all comes down to faith, and it not the fault of science that we’ve learned how to really learn things, not just take faith in some story.

u/nothing_clever · 1 pointr/atheism

Damn, actually I thought he was suggesting this be our holy book.

u/harlows_monkeys · 1 pointr/Physics

You might consider reading QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, by Richard Feynman. It's a short, inexpensive, book based on 4 lectures he gave for the general public on the subject of light. With all due respect to those who have answered you so far, I think Feynman's explanation is clearer.

The 4 lectures themselves are available in streaming video.

u/technically_art · 1 pointr/askscience

> do you mean that they are man-made tools to help picture and calculate and predict?

Yes.

> once we figured out that light is the oscillation of the EM field, that proved to us that fields are actually a real physical... thing.

That's definitely not the case (the second part.) In fact the experiments of Michelson and Morley are usually cited as definitive proof that it's not a real, physical thing.

> If you don't feel confident answering, are there any books you would refer me to?

Check out Feynman's books "6 Not-So-Easy Pieces" and "QED". QED is the one more relevant to this discussion. I would also recommend Roger Penrose's The Road to Reality if you have a lot of spare time and are willing to keep up with it properly.

Are you taking an intro to physics course as an undergraduate? If so, and if you are interested enough to take more coursework on physics, try taking an EMags (Electromagnetic Fields) class in the EE or physics department. 20th century physics (relativity) and a couple of QM (Quantum Mechanics) classes would be helpful as well. After you take a couple of EM and QM courses, you'll really appreciate how god damn hard it is to have any sort of "intuition" about physics, and how important it is to just treat the math like math.

u/LocalAmazonBot · 1 pointr/askscience

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Link: QED is the one more relevant to this discussion.

u/lilgreenland · 0 pointsr/Physics

I'll recommend QED by Richard P. Feynman. It's not a textbook, and it has no math. Yet it quickly leads to a solid understanding of QM.

​

https://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/0691125759/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

u/piroplex · 0 pointsr/science

Richard Feynman's "Strange Theory of Light and Matter" explains why. It's all about probabilities.