I should really be indebted to John Gribbin for his book ’In search of Schrodinger’s Cat’. If not for that book, I would have chucked Alice and her quantum explorations just after a couple of chapters. Let me put this out straight! This book is strictly for those who have read something about Quantum Physics. I remember very well Neils Bohr’s statement in John Gribbin’s book that someone who isn’t shocked by quantum physics has not understood it at all.
Gilmore succeeds in shocking you out of your senses but Gribbin helps you in understanding! The quantumland in which Alice travels is rather like a theme park in which Alice sometimes manifests as an observer, sometimes as a participant particle. Different issues in quantum physics are highlighted in each chapter with the author taking sides with competing theories as and when necessary. The first chapter is an account of Alice’s first interactions and reactions in quantumland, highlighted by her understanding of electrons. There is an incident when Alice asks an electron to slow down so that she can see how an electron actually looks like. Unfortunately for Alice, the electron assumes a look so fuzzy and quite out of focus that she could no more see what he looked like than she had been able to before. When questioned, the electron (In real fact, the author himself) implies in its reply the Heisenberg’s Uncertainity principle when in fact the actual reason was the energy mass equation formulated by Einstein. Faced by a complete lack of understanding of quantum principles, Alice proceeds to the Heisenberg bank where she is introduced to the concept of energy transfers between particles. She learns here that what is not forbidden is compulsory along with the fact that for smaller periods of time, conservation of energy doesn’t hold good, though she doesn’t get to make much sense out of them. However, the journey to the Mechanic’s Institute is a great help where she gets to know why quantum physics is so radically different from the classical one with the help of impressive thought experiments. She indeed tries to comprehend the superposition of amplitudes with reference to quantum interference but remains unconvinced. Immediately she gets to know about the measurement problem and the various theories explaining it. However, Alice as well as the interested reader is left to understand it, all by himself.
The ’incomplete’ journey is carried on with descriptions about virtual particles and quarks and their interactions touching upon various topics like chemical bonding, inter particle interaction, nucleus and the like. The reader is finally relieved of all his troubles when suddenly Alice gets back to the real world! What a relief! Needless to say, the book could have been a lot better. The author had a powerful character in Alice ( signifying an unknowing yet curious mind). But the advantage is left begging with discontinuity, excessive play of words and attempts to over sophisticate abstractness. It certainly feels that the author was on an intellectual adventure all by himself and did not even bother about his reader’s perception.