Physics

Quantum computing is a growing field at the intersection of physics and computer science. This module introduces three of the key principles that govern how quantum computers work: superposition, quantum measurement, and entanglement. The goal of this module is to bridge the gap between popular science articles and advanced undergraduate texts by making some of the more technical aspects accessible to motivated high school students. Problem sets and simulation based labs of various levels are included to reinforce the conceptual ideas described in the text. This is intended as a one week course for high school students between the ages of 15-18 years. The course begins by introducing basic concepts in quantum mechanics which are needed to understand quantum computing.

In this paper, we present the Quantum Information Software Developer Kit - Qiskit, for teaching quantum computing to undergraduate students, with basic knowledge of quantum mechanics postulates. We focus on presenting the construction of the programs on any common laptop or desktop computer and their execution on real quantum processors through the remote access to the quantum hardware available on the IBM Quantum Experience platform. The codes are made available throughout the text so that readers, even with little experience in scientific computing, can reproduce them and adopt the methods discussed in this paper to address their own quantum computing projects. The results presented are in agreement with theoretical predictions and show the effectiveness of the Qiskit package as a robust classroom working tool for the introduction of applied concepts of quantum computing and quantum information theory.

Learning quantum mechanics is challenging, even for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. Research-validated interactive tutorials that build on students' prior knowledge can be useful tools to enhance student learning. We have been investigating student difficulties with quantum mechanics pertaining to the double-slit experiment in various situations that appear to be counterintuitive and contradict classical notions of particles and waves. For example, if we send single electrons through the slits, they may behave as a "wave" in part of the experiment and as a "particle" in another part of the same experiment. Here we discuss the development and evaluation of a research-validated Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorial (QuILT) which makes use of an interactive simulation to improve student understanding of the double-slit experiment and strives to help students develop a good grasp of foundational issues in quantum mechanics. We discuss common student difficulties identified during the development and evaluation of the QuILT and analyze the data from the pretest and post test administered to the upper-level undergraduate and first-year physics graduate students before and after they worked on the QuILT to assess its effectiveness. These data suggest that on average, the QuILT was effective in helping students develop a more robust understanding of foundational concepts in quantum mechanics that defy classical intuition using the context of the double-slit experiment. Moreover, the upper-level undergraduates outperformed physics graduate students on the post test. One possible reason for this difference in performance may be the level of student engagement with the QuILT due to the grade incentive. In the undergraduate course, the post test was graded for correctness while in the graduate course, it was only graded for completeness.

We show how to visualize the process of diagonalizing the Hamiltonian matrix to find the energy eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a generic one-dimensional quantum system. Starting in the familiar sine-wave basis of an embedding infinite square well, we display the Hamiltonian matrix graphically with the basis functions alongside. Each step in the diagonalization process consists of selecting a nonzero off-diagonal matrix element, then rotating the two corresponding basis vectors in their own subspace until this element is zero. We provide Mathematica code to display the effects of these rotations on both the matrix and the basis functions. As an electronic supplement we also provide a JavaScript web app to interactively carry out this process.

The milq approach to quantum physics for high schools focuses on the conceptual questions of quantum physics. Students should be given the opportunity to engage with the world view of modern physics. The aim is to achieve a conceptually clear formulation of quantum physics with a minimum of formulas. In order to provide students with verbal tools they can use in discussions and argumentations we formulated four "reasoning tools". They help to facilitate qualitative discussions of quantum physics, allow students to predict quantum mechanical effects, and help to avoid learning difficulties. They form a "beginners' axiomatic system" for quantum physics.

There is increasing pressure generally for lecturers to adapt their supervision practices of postgraduate students to better prepare postgraduate students for careers outside of academia. In this paper we examine what such pressure may mean for the supervision and preparation of theoretical physicists specifically, theoretical physics being a sub-discipline of physics usually perceived as a highly specialised niche area of scientific practice. In this exploratory study we apply the concepts of the Specialisation Dimension of Legitimation Code Theory to analyse and reveal the dominant concepts and codes, as well as the code shifts that may occur during postgraduate studies, based on an autoethnographic account of theoretical physicist identity development. The findings demonstrate an underpinning value for both knowledge and knower attributes in the journey to becoming a legitimate theoretical physicist, and the critical role played by postgraduate supervisors in facilitating the process of theoretical physicist identity development. Also highlighted are possible implications for supervisors faced with students intending to take up employment outside of academia.

Immersive virtual reality (VR) has enormous potential for education, but classroom resources are limited. Thus, it is important to identify whether and when VR provides sufficient advantages over other modes of learning to justify its deployment. In a between-subjects experiment, we compared three methods of teaching Moon phases (a hands-on activity, VR, and a desktop simulation) and measured student improvement on existing learning and attitudinal measures. While a substantial majority of students preferred the VR experience, we found no significant differences in learning between conditions. However, we found differences between conditions based on gender, which was highly correlated with experience with video games. These differences may indicate certain groups have an advantage in the VR setting.

In the world of building acoustics, a standard tapping machine has long existed for the purpose of replicating and regulating impact noise. However there still exist other kinds of structure-borne noise which could benefit from being considered when designing a building. One of these types of sources is rolling noise. This report details a proposal for defining a standard rolling noise machine. Just as the standard tapping machine can be used in any building and on any surface as a way of characterizing and comparing the performance of various floors with respect to impact noise, the development of a standard rolling device would enable the same evaluation and comparison to be made with respect to rolling noise. The hope is that such a prototype may serve as a launch pad for further development, spurring future discussion and criticism on the topic by others who may wish to aid in the pursuit of a truly standardized rolling noise machine.

In deciding on a student's grade in a class, an instructor generally needs to combine many individual grading judgments into one overall judgment. Two relatively common numerical scales used to specify individual grades are the 4-point scale (where each whole number 0-4 corresponds to a letter grade) and the percent scale (where letter grades A through D are uniformly distributed in the top 40% of the scale). This paper uses grading data from a single series of courses offered over a period of 10 years to show that the grade distributions emerging from these two grade scales differed in many ways from each other. Evidence suggests that the differences are due more to the grade scale than to either the students or the instructors. One major difference is that the fraction of students given grades less than C- was over 5 times larger when instructors used the percent scale. The fact that each instructor who used both grade scales gave more than 4 times as many of these low grades under percent scale grading suggests that the effect is due to the grade scale rather than the instructor. When the percent scale was first introduced in these courses in 2006, one of the authors of this paper, who is also one of the instructors in this data set, had confidently predicted that any changes in course grading would be negligible. They were not negligible, even for this instructor.

Many concepts of physical optics can be visually illustrated on a relatively simple optical setup in a table-top format, not requiring any very specific equipment. Diffraction, interferences, speckle, image formation, Fourier optics, strioscopy are among the many themes to be shown using the demonstration system described here. This short letter describes how to reproduce the setup and prepare the samples. It also gives a brief description of the experiments that can be performed to illustrate the main concepts of physical optics (except coherence). Its content should be of interest to the teachers and students at high school and early years of university.