One Hundred Years of Uncertainty

Welcome to our series of short weekly or bi-weekly videocasts at a popular level, aimed at a lay audience, to celebrate the centenary of Quantum Mechanics #IYQ2025, and popularise the revolutionary ideas and most significant developments in the field over the last 100 years, right up to the latest quantum technologies, including:

• Origins of Quantization
• Commutators and Uncertainty – Matrix Mechanics
• The Schrödinger equation – Wave Mechanics
• Superposition and Complementarity – Postulates of Quantum Mechanics
• The Copenhagen Interpretation – Classical and Quantum Probability
• The 1927 Solvay Conference, the Bohr-Einstein debates and Schrödinger's cat
• Hidden variables versus “Shut Up and Calculate” – John von Neuman and David Bohm
• Exclusion, Spin, Statistics and all that
• The Dirac equation
• Successes of Molecular Quantum Mechanics
• Lasers and Quantum Optics
• Transistors, Semiconductors and Superconductors
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Quantum Electrodynamics, Symmetry and development of the Standard Model
• Electron Correlation and the rise of Density Functional Theory
• John Bell's theorem – All Interpretations are Not Created Equal
• Superluminal “spooky action-at-a-distance”
• Entanglement, Qubits and Quantum Gates
• Quantum Key Cryptography and Quantum Teleportation
• Quantum Computing

Produced by N. Sukumar

Schedule: 25 April - 22 November 2025

• Introductory Episode
• Episode 1: An Act of Desperation – Max Planck and Birth of the Quantum
• Episode 2: Annum Mirabilis - the photoelectric effect
• Episode 3: The Bohr atom - the right answers for the wrong reason! 
• Episode 4: A wave on Mon, Wed, Fri, a particle on Tue, Thu, Sat. - the Compton Effect and Wave-particle Duality
• Episode 5: Birth of Matrix Mechanics - every progress paid for by a sacrifice 
• Episode 6: A grandeur unsurpassed in theoretical physics - Wave Mechanics
• Episode 7: Classical and Quantum probabilities - The Superposition principle 
• Episode 8: 5 Theorems of Linear Algebra 
• Episode 9: Probabilistic Interpretation and Postulates of Quantum Mechanics
• Episode 10: Origin of Quantization
• Episode 11: The Uncertainty Principle and Complementarity 
• Episode 12: Atomic Orbitals 
• Episode 13: Indistinguishability, Spin, Statistics and Quantum Electrodynamics 
• Episode 14: Approximation Methods for Many Electron Systems  
• Episode 15: Born-Oppenheimer approximation and Potential Energy Surfaces 
• Episode 16: Theories of Chemical Bonding
• Episode 17: Beyond Born-Oppenheimer, spontaneously broken symmetry and Berry phase
• Episode 18: The Bohr-Einstein debates, EPR paradox and Schrödinger’s cat
• Episode 19: Mean field theories and beyond - Electron correlation
• Episode 20: Phonons, Excitons and Quantization of the Radiation Field
• Episode 21: Feynman Diagrams for Quantum Electrodynamics and Quantum Field Theory
• Episode 22: Diagrams for Coupled Cluster 
• Episode 23: Introduction to Density Functional Theory 
• Episode 24: Exchange-correlation hole and Kohn-Sham DFT 
• Episode 25: Jacob's Ladder of density functionals 
• Episode 26: Introduction to Symmetry and Group Theory in Quantum Mechanics 
• Episode 27: Character Tables and Selection Rules