Quantum Mechanics

I am currently handling a book project by Professor Pedro Sacramento, entitled 'Strongly Correlated Systems, Coherence and Entanglement'. This is an advanced graduate-level textbook on quantum mechanics, of which I only have a vague understanding.

My favourite quantum mechanics book to date is 'Introduction to Quantum Mechanics', written by David J. Griffiths. The following is an extract taken from the preface of the book.

'Unlike Newton's mechanics, or Maxwell's electrodynamics, or Einstein's relativity, quantum theory was not created - or even definitively packaged - by one individual, and it retains to this day some of the scars of its exhilarating but traumatic youth. There is no general consensus as to what its fundamental principles are, how it should be taught, or what it really "means."

Every competent physicist can "do" quantum mechanics, but the stories we tell ourselves about what we are doing are as various as the tales of Scheherazade, and almost as implausible. Richard Feynman (one of its greatest practitioners) remarked, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." '

Tiong Bahru

The following extract is taken from an article entitled 'Modernism in Singapore', written by Dr Johannes Widodo, a professor at the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore.

'Tiong Bahru was the first housing estate developed by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT). About 2000 units of three- to five-story apartment buildings were built between 1936 and 1954. Thirty blocks containing 931 units were built by the Trust in 1936, before the Second World War, along Tiong Poh Road and Moh Guan Terrace of the Tiong Bahru area.

Fifty blocks of apartments comprising 1040 units on the right side of Tiong Bahru Road were built in 1948, during the post-war period. The one- to five-room dwelling units and mix-used units were laid out on a grid provided with generous green public open space. Clean and rational architectural facades featuring rounded balconies, thin horizontal slabs, and ventilation holes gave the place its unique modernist character.

The public can walk along footpaths through the spacious backyards owned and maintained by the residents on the ground floor. The atmosphere within the housing complex is intimate and warm, which encourages residents to mingle outside their houses.

Tiong Bahru Estate's design bears some likeness to the design principles of the post-war New Towns in Britain: the emphasis on creating small neighbourhoods and maximum privacy between individual homes, the need to promote health and to improve security thanks to open views and public surveillance. The block's design was also influenced by local architectural idioms, such as the Straits Settlements' shop-house typology. The layout is based on a modified shop-house plan with a courtyard acting as an air/light well, a back lane and spiral staircases.'