Maybe a pointless nitpick, but is a PDF on GitHub really the best way to distribute this though? I guess you also didn't want to give away the .tex file? arXiv is usually the best place to upload these kinds of notes so they can be indexed and easily found.
The PDF is essentially higher math with QM-related narrative interspersed here and there. Even if you're a STEM graduate, I found that these skills atrophy pretty quickly if you're not using them day-to-day in your work. Scientists often vastly overestimate how conversant their readers are with "obvious" prerequisites such as vector calculus.
And you can often tell on HN, because you have a thread where two mathematicians chat with each other, and then everyone else is just relating anecdotes about quantum mechanics.
I'm looking for a QM book structured similar to Norvig LISP books, ie following a demonstrative didactic method, by building computational implementations of toy models demonstrating various aspects of QM (not just QC), toy models of resonator, particle in a box, etc
The problem is that after the basics of QM, there were literally hundreds of papers by dozens of important scientists developing the subsequent theory. And you can no longer teach the subject in a linear historical fashion.
[1] https://www.cengage.com/c/modern-physics-3e-serway-moses-moy...
In my uni Classical Mechanics course was a pre-requisite to QM to ensure that students have a good intuition about Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms, because those are non-trivial concepts by themselves.
You can solve any problem by using only the Lagrangian, there is really no need for the Hamiltonian, which also has the disadvantage of not being relativistically invariant, like the Lagrangian.
Also the name of "Hamiltonian" is somewhat misused. The most important contribution of Hamilton has been the definition of Hamilton's integral, i.e. the integral over time of the Lagrangian. That is an extremely important function and it would have deserved better the name of "Hamiltonian", than the less important Hamiltonian, which also was not introduced for the first time by Hamilton.
How to transform the system of equations of Lagrange to the "Hamiltonian" form had already been described by Poisson, and then by Cauchy, the latter using a form exactly equivalent to that presented later by Hamilton.
The notation H for the Hamiltonian has nothing to do with the name of Hamilton. Lagrange had used H for this quantity in 1811, without giving any meaning to the letter, then Hamilton in 1834 has reused the notations of Lagrange, adding "function S" for Hamilton's integral, also without giving any meanings to the letters.
Besides, Einstein is just about the worst physicist to learn from on QM
QM pedagogy problem is, how to teach QM to people who don't know physics beyond [F= ma], and math beyond algebra, differential calculus, & virtually no probability beyond mean & std dev?
[1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691033273/qe...
If you want something that's more focused throughout on the historical progression, a classic book is Jammer's Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics, but it assumes you're already familiar with quantum and statistical mechanics.
If you like videos, the physicist Jorge Diaz has excellent videos accessibly detailing the experimental and theoretical history https://www.youtube.com/@jkzero/playlists
In this interview he goes over pretty much exactly what you mentioned (and a lot more):
https://quantum.cloud.ibm.com/learning/en/courses/basics-of-...
It has prereqs in complex numbers and linear algebra, but is quite easy to follow if you have these.
I like how it first uses quantum notations to describe the non quantum world, so you get used to the reasoning. Then it adds the actual quantum stuff on top of the now understandable reasoning.
I really suggest starting with quantum itself, before spin-1/2 systems are easier to start, and photons (in my opinion), even easier (vide Sec. 2 in https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.61.8.081809).
So, I recommend starting from "Quantum Mechanics Theoretical Minimum" by Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman, "Six Quantum Pieces: A First Course in Quantum Physics" by Valerio Scarani or "Introduction to Quantum Information Science" by Artur Ekert (https://github.com/thosgood/qubit.guide). To dive deeper, I recommend " Lectures on Quantum Mechanics" by Berthold-Georg Englert.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-quantum-cookbook...
The Quantum Cookbook
Mathematical Recipes for the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
Jim Baggott
1:Planck's Derivation of E = hn: The Quantisation of Energy
2:Einstein's Derivation of E = mc2: The Equivalence of Mass and Energy
3:Bohr's Derivation of the Rydberg Formula: Quantum Numbers and Quantum Jumps
4:De Broglie's Derivation of / = h/p: Wave-particle Duality
5:Schrödinger's Derivation of the Wave Equation: Quantisation as an Eigenvalue Problem
6:Born's Interpretation of the Wavefunction: Quantum Probability
7:Heisenberg, Bohr, Robertson, and the Uncertainty Principle : The Interpretation of Quantum Uncertainty
8:Heisenberg's Derivation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle: The Stability of Matter and the Periodic Table
9:Dirac's Derivation of the Relativistic Wave Equation: Electron Spin and Antimatter
10:Dirac, Von Neumann, and the Derivation of the Quantum Formalism: State Vectors in Hilbert Space
11:Von Neumann and the Problem of Quantum Measurement: The 'Collapse of the Wavefunction'
12:Einstein, Bohm, Bell, and the Derivation of Bell's Inequality: Entanglement and Quantum Non-locality
Not a book per se, but if interested in videos, run, don't walk to check out Jorge Diaz's channel (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCJl3-pHGuU for example). It is just what you're asking for.
Another underrated channel for historical chemistry/physics fans: Marb's Lab at https://www.youtube.com/@Marbslab