Basic understanding in quantum mechanics for high school

[EchAbbadon1]

Hi,

I am a high school student, and I am planning on going into quantum computers as a profession. However I have failed so far to find any resources or teachers, organized in any fashion to help me to get a head start on the subject before I have to tackle it in college. I feel it is very important to get as broad an understanding as possible and I have started research as much as I can, but the only information I have run into seems to be higher level materials. Does anyone know of any information on the internet that can help me, step by step in starting to get a basic understanding in quantum mechanics beyond that of which is found in my high school Chemistry book. I would greatly appreciate any recommendations anyone would have.

Thanks

 

[Ambitwistor]

If you're serious about going into this field, then you should just buy a few books on quantum mechanics. They can be expensive, but you'll have to buy them sooner or later if you're going to work in this field, so it may as well be now. Books are vastly better than what you can find on the Internet.

I like Liboff's text. Supplement it with Vol. III of the Feynman Lectures; Feynman's approach in that text is kind of non-standard, but particularly useful in quantum computing.

(Feynman uses the Dirac bra-ket state vector notation a lot, which isn't helpful for some kinds of problems, but is ideal for quantum logic. For that reason, you may not prefer the often-recommended text by Griffiths text, although Griffiths is very good in other respects.)

 

[jcsd]

Quantum information is not an easy subject, your not going to be able to get any real insight into it without first learning about quantum mechanics (which would probably also require improving your maths) and also learning a little other maths.

However, if your really interested I recommend starting with Quantum Mechanics by Alastair Rae (IoP) (which seems to me to be becoming the standard in English universties for an introducing quantum mechanics, the only real downside is that is assumes that you know most of the maths contained within) which is relatviely cheap for a textbook (15 English pounds) and the latest editon contains a brief but technical introduction to quantum computing.