Statistical and Quantum Mechanics
A Study of Motion and Change
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
PROLOGUE
I wrote this book in order to gather together some of the research works I have written during the past twenty-five years. These works are scattered among many journals, conference proceedings and some of them were not published before. I collected articles that fall in two main areas of research, namely, statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics. These are the contents of Part I and Part III of this book respectively. In Part II, some comments on the problems of motion and change are discussed. This interlude serves as a bridge between the main two parts of this book. The articles included are introduced chronologically as well. Thus the first part contains works from 1972 to 1978, the second part from 1982 to 1987 and the third part from 1989 to 2008.
A central theme emerged from all these works, namely, the problem of motion and change. Thus in Part I this problem is treated in the form of a system of many interacting particles in non-equilibrium condition. The standard approach to deal with such a problem is statistical mechanics. However, the problem of change is encountered in a wide range of phenomena extending from the expansion of the universe to the quantum mechanical description of the motion of a single particle. These are the two main problems discussed in Parts II and III respectively. The universality of this problem, and how it shows up in diverse situations, requires a universal solution that applies to all these special cases. The universal concept of Change lies beyond the scope of physics and hence it was addreseed in the philosophical analysis given in Chapter10, Part III.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
This book is the outcome of the research works the author has published during the past 30 years. It investigates the phenomenon of change in its most general aspects and the motion of a system of interacting particles as a concrete example of this phenomenon. The philosophical and historical background of the concept of change is reviewed. The dynamics of a system of interacting particles has a wide range of applications extending from the motion of few quantum systems to the expansion of the universe as a whole. The new dynamics introduced in this book is based on the notion of quantum memory, which means that in every process of change there is a changeless element in the form of the persistence of past states of a quantum system. In this book the author proposes solutions to some of the lingering problems in modern physics such as: the non-equilibrium distribution function of a system of interacting particles, the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the measurement problem, the unification of the special theory of relativity and quantum mechanics and the precise calculation of the age of the universe.
About the Author
Wafik A. Wassef resides in Canada and has authored many research articles published in scientific journals and conference proceedings. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada in 1973. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow, National Research Council of Canada, at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada and a research associate and lecturer at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. Presently Dr. Wassef teaches at the department of Computer Engineering, Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada since 1986.