Quantum Physics

Short summary and personal views

This essay aims to summarise most of what I found interesting or helpful in the documentary on
quantum physics from ADVEXON TV, and at the same time, to express some of my personal views on
how Quantum physics could be used to gain sizeable technological advances for the human society.

The documentary itself, while surprisingly short given the subject it takes on, managed to
impress me with the very intuitive way it presented some of the basic concepts of Quantum physics. Ive
studied basic quantum theory in High School (as most of my colleagues), but the way its been taught to
me in school left me with a lot of blurry concepts and unanswered questions. I very much appreciate the
fact that this documentary tries to make analogies and explain everything with examples. The thing I
found most helpful was the analogy between the double slit experiment and bowling. After having that
explained to me, everything else quantum physics suddenly looked more simple and not so much
otherworldy as it did before.

Another thing I found very helpful and enlightening was the historic approach to quantum
theory, in the fact that all theories and discoveries were presented along with who came up with them
and in what scientific context.

All in all, I cant say I found the experiments presented (i.e. the atom teleportation and quantum
computing) particularly interesting, mostly because the documentary tried to give some palpable
examples which were so far from the actual point the experiments have gotten to, it made them look
closer to the logical fallacy of slippery slope rather than real possibilities in the near future (also, I just
dont like that particular vision of teleportation, and watching a good 5 minutes of that made me feel
uneasy)

That being said, I found the documentary fairly educational and it made me think a bit about
how complex scientific concepts are presented in schools and why students have such difficulty in
understanding said concepts.

Although I said I didnt like the part of the documentary regarding experiments (quantum
computing included) I have actually known about quantum computing for quite a while and Ive done a
fair share of research on the principles behind this new branch of Computer Science. In fact, while the
first quantum computing system for home use is a long way from being build, several well-known
Science Laboratories and institutions (CERN, NASA, NSA) have started their own research programs in
regard to quantum computers, and also started building their own computers using quantum circuits to
replace standard RAM or ROM cells and are making sizeable progress towards minimizing these circuits
and implementing them into smaller and more versatile computers. Intel, the CPU producing Giant has
also taken an interest, but probably for business reasons they refused to publish any of their findings.

Quantum physics is starting to look less like a fantasy and an otherworldy subject and more like
a concept that could be implemented in every bit of technology and aspect of our lives. Therefore, I
think it would be highly beneficial for society if more accent would be put on making quantum science
easy to understand and assimilate for students in science departments, so research on this subject
would look more accessible and therefore develop more quickly into technology that can actually use
the most recent findings in the field to better human society.