Welcome to Visual Quantum Mechanics.

This CD contains a lot of digital movies that can be accessed through the application
VQM.exe.
Just double-click the application's icon to launch the software from the CD.
Do not drag the application to your hard disk.

The application "Visual Quantum Mechanics - 1" is a presentation environment for the
computer-generated animations illustrating the book "Visual Quantum Mechanics".
Basically, it is an interactive movie player that combines movies with text, graphics,
and further information.
This application was written with Macromedia Director 8.5 on an Apple Macintosh computer.
The movies were created with Mathematica 3.0 and 4.0 in QuickTime format.


SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

This is a hybrid CD, it runs on Windows 95/98/NT/2000 and Macintosh computers.
The following requirements must be fulfilled.

Windows:
Win 95/ Win NT4 or later, QuickTime 4 or later (QuickTime installer on the CD-ROM)
CPU: Pentium 166 MHz
RAM: 32 MB installed
256 colors  at 640x480 pixels (thousands of colors recommended)
4-speed CD-ROM (12xCD-ROM recommended)

Macintosh:
MacOS 8.1 or later, QuickTime 4 or later.
Mac OS X: Classic mode only
CPU: Power Mac, 120 MHz
RAM: 32 MB installed, 12 MB of available RAM
256 colors  at 640x480 pixels (thousands of colors recommended)
4-speed CD-ROM (12xCD-ROM recommended)

Linux/Unix:
Presently, there is no version of the Macromedia Director application for these
platforms. Hence it is not possible to support these platforms.


You won't have much fun with the minimal requirements. The software has been designed
to run smoothly on multimedia computers of the year 2000. The startup time of the
application "Visual Quantum Mechanics - 1" and the performance of the movies depend
critically on the speed of your CD-ROM drive and on the overall performance of your
computer. The movies are played directly from the CD. A 12x CD-ROM drive or better gives
you a big advantage. If you need the best possible performance (e.g., for video
projection in a lecture hall), and if you have 600 MB of free disk space, you may copy
everything to your hard disk.

Tip: You can skip the animation at startup by pressing the shift-key.

The software on the CD will launch the QuickTime installer if it cannot find QuickTime
on your system. The installer will install QuickTime 5.0.
The newest version of QuickTime is also available on the Internet:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime


The CD also contains the Mathematica source code of the movies.  It is accessible from
within the application "Visual Quantum Mechanics - 1". If you want to create your own
movies you must have Mathematica.

Mathematica 4.0 is available from
Wolfram Research, Inc.
100 Trade Center Drive
Champaign, IL 61820-7237
USA 
http://www.wolfram.com/

The Mathematica code on the CD assumes that the software found in the folder "Mathematica"
on the CD is installed at the appropriate places within the folder Mathematica 4.0 on your
hard disk.

Technical notes for Mathematica users:

Some of the code needs Version 3.0 or later. You may copy the text and paste it in a
Mathematica notebook. The text will apear in a single notebook cell. You may then evaluate
this cell to generate the movie as it appears in Visual Quantum Mechanics.
Of course this makes only sense if you plan to vary the initial conditions and/or the
method of visualization.

(Mathematica 3 on a Mac sometimes has problems with line breaks when pasting text from
the clipboard into a notebook. In this case, simply select the whole text and paste it
again.
There should be no problem with Mathematica 4. See, however, item B) below)

The code should run without problems under the following conditions:

A) The Mathematica packages provided on the CD have been installed on their correct
position.
The correct position is in the Mathematica program folder. Place the folder "Graphics"
and the Folder "Quantum Mechanics" into /AddOns/Applications.
The folder "Graphics" contains packages for the visualization of complex-valued
functions. The package "ComplexPlot.m" comes with documentation. Rebuild the Help-index
to access the documentation via the Help browser.
The folder Quantum Mechanics contains an application for the numerical solution of
the Schrdinger equation. QuantumKernel has no documentation yet. Check the homepage
of Visual Quantum Mechanics: http://www.kfunigraz.ac.at/imawww/vqm/. The usage is
explained a bit by the Mathematica notebooks containing the code for the movies. The
application QuantumKernel also contains routines for solving the Pauli and Dirac equations,
but these features are not yet fully tested. Newer versions will be made available on the
home page of this book, see the contact information below.

B) Be sure to paste the text in a Mathematica cell which is in input form.
(Menu: Cell->Convert to->InputForm).
This is done automatically if you set the default input format type to "InputForm".
(Menu: Cell->Default Input Format Type->InputForm).
If a package is loaded from a cell in Standard Form which also contains commands from that
package then you are most likely to run into problems with what is called "shadowing".
Another possibility to avoid this problem is to split the cell after the package loading
commands.

C) Start a new kernel session before you evaluate the notebook with the code pasted from
Visual Quantum Mechanics. No particular care has been taken to protect the definitions in
one notebook from the definitions made somewhere else. So interactions are likely to occur
and they will produce unpredictable results.

D) Be aware that many notebooks take an exceedingly long time to execute.  In order to
test your modifications you should, for example, reduce the number of time-steps or
PlotPoints etc.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Visit the homepage of this book:
http://www.kfunigraz.ac.at/imawww/vqm/

or write me an e-mail:
mailto://bernd.thaller@kfunigraz.ac.at

or write snail-mail to
Bernd Thaller
Institut of Mathematics
University of Graz
Heinrichstrasse 36
A-8010 GRAZ
Austria/Europe

Publisher:
TELOS, The Electronic Library of Science
Springer-Verlag New York
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
(212) 460-150
http://www.telospub.com/


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

 2002 by Bernd Thaller
Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. is granted the exclusive right
to distribute this CD-ROM.
The author retains the copyright for the movies and the software.
Published by TELOS, The Electronic Library of Science.
TELOS is an imprint of Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.

This work consist of a printed book and a CD-ROM disc packaged with the book,
and is protected by federal copyright law and international treaty.
You are not allowed to make any copy of the CD-ROM for any reason, without
the written permission of the publisher except that you may download
and copy the files from the CD-ROM for you own research, teaching, and
personal communications use. Commercial use without the written consent
of Springer-Verlag is strictly prohibited.

The use of general descriptive names, trademarks, etc., in this publication,
even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a
sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Mark Act,
may accordingly be used by anyone. Where those designations appear in this book
or on the CD and Springer-Verlag was aware of a trademark claim, the
designations follow the capitalization style used by the manufacturer.


DISCLAIMER

Springer-Verlag or the author makes no warranty of representation, either
express or implied, with respect to this CD-ROM or book, including their quality,
merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will
Springer-Verlag or the author be liable for direct, indirect, special,
incidental, or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability
to use the disc or book, even if Springer-Verlag or the author has been
advised of the possibility of such damages.
