15 min • 1 lectures
This course presents quantum physics as the tested rulebook for matter, light, measurement, and information at small scales. Lecture 1, Reality Fails the Common-Sense Test, opens with a single-photon double-slit experiment and anchors three key observations: Planck’s 1900 quantization of black-body radiation, Einstein’s 1905 photoelectric effect, and Davisson-Germer electron diffraction. It then covers Stern-Gerlach spin quantization, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and Bell’s 1964 theorem. Aspect’s 1982 experiments and Hensen et al. 2015 loophole-free Bell tests confirm that entangled particles violate local-hidden-variable limits. The lecture explains quantization, wave-particle duality, superposition, amplitudes, uncertainty, measurement, and entanglement with clear analogies and their limits. It closes with the practical Observation → Model → Limit rule that separates experimental results from interpretive claims. The course therefore supplies a concise, evidence-based map for professionals who need to understand why lasers, transistors, MRI, atomic clocks, and quantum computers operate on quantum amplitudes rather than classical billiard-ball mechanics.
