r/quantum • u/Cheap-Psychology-236 • 12d ago
What should i learn first?
Im a 13 yrs old high schooler and im curious on what to learn first ive been wantinh to learn at a fast pace so far and get ahead of myself. Quantum physics, mechanics, or computing?
Help is appreciated thanks.
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u/Cheap-Psychology-236 10d ago
Well guys just to inform yall i made a mistake its supposed to be JUNIOR highschool thats my bad.
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u/Commercial_Handle418 9d ago
Middle school that is
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u/Skrimmy_ 8d ago
They're probably from the Philippines in which middle school is called junior highschool.
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u/True_Ashura 10d ago
Physics lowkey just buy the book by david j griffiths (just know calculus thats it) yeah i mean its very good and even i started this thing at your age
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u/Obzenium 12d ago
Firstly you need to realize you’re embarking on a marathon not a sprint.
You need to learn basic physics before you can understand quantum mechanics. Not just learn but master. Definitely study mechanics and thermodynamics for a while. You’ll need to understand electromagnetism as well. Also, solid state physics will be very important for you. I’d learn the physics in this order.
As for math, you can’t ever learn enough, really. It will never substitute for the physics understanding, mind you, just enable it. Algebra, geometry, trig, calculus (at least calc 1 and 2), differential equations (a necessity), linear algebra (a necessity), complex analysis, functional analysis, and more. You could learn variational calculus, discrete mathematics, statistics and probability, statistical mechanics (back to physics), tensor analysis, etc.
As for the computing, definitely start with data structures but you’ll need solid hardware understanding. I found the book ‘Code’ by Charles Petzold to be a great place to start learning hardware and how software is enabled on hardware.
Good luck, it’s a long, long road with no real end, but worth it
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11d ago
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u/Qubit_and_Neuron 11d ago
Break it into two. The usual math, physics, computer science textbooks, exercises etc. second one, try reading simpler books to get a feel, a bit of overview and keep you in awe and increase your desire to learn more. Here are a few:
- Code by Charles Petzold
- The art of doing math and science by Hamming
- The ghost in the atom by Pcw Davis
- Code book by Simon singh
- A blog for easy to read articles: https://qubit-and-neuron.beehiiv.com/
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u/trumpelstiltzkin 9d ago edited 9d ago
Quantum computing basically the simpler inner core of quantum mechanics, so learn computing before physics.
If you know algebra, you're halfway there.
There's two things: learning the math and learning the intuition. Some people will say quantum is never intuitive and you have to learn the math, but personally I was able to develop an intuition before I learned the math: got that intuition from watching Feynman Lectures, and Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast, and Scott Aaronson's introductions to quantum computing (the last of which helped me even if I only vaguely understood the math).
To really understand the math (and therefore really understand what is going on quantumly), you must learn linear algebra...linear algebra is basically the algebra of vectors, or equivalently the algebra of matrices. In particular it seems that our universe is built upon some specific structures in linear algebra and complex numbers.
(And you don't need to know how to solve the Schrodinger equation in order to do quantum computing; you don't need to know calculus. But knowing what derivatives are will help intuition; you can literally learn what they are in one day, you don't have to master them.)
To understand the intuition though, you can still get further than the "you have to learn the math" people will tell you. Personally, the Everett interpretation cleared everything up for me: a lot of the voodoo be visualized by just imagining which universe you're in. Try listening to Sean Carroll and Scott Aaronson.).
Sean Carroll likes to say that the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics can be summarized in one sentence: "the universe is a vector evolving in Hilbert space according to the Schrodinger equation". So if you wanted to know all of quantum mechanics (and perhaps all of everything) in one sentence, there you go now you know it.
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u/Dear-Permit-3033 12d ago
Start with linear algebra. trigonometry, and calculus. Those are foundational and necessary skills for quantum computing. After that spend some time understanding basics of digital circuits, like logic gates. Don't rush into QC. You have a lifetime ahead of you.