
Teaching quantum information science to high-school students - mathgenius
https://scirate.com/arxiv/2005.07874
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CaptP
As a high school student, that's actually doing quantum information physics
research, I thought that I could add a unique perspective on this!

Personally, I love the sentiment behind this. It's great that there are people
who are trying to make such an exciting field accessible. That being said, the
importance of learning high level math cannot be understated. If students want
to pursue anything impactful in physics, they require an extensive background
in mathematics. If they try to learn about the current research of the field,
the math in the papers will be extremely intimidating (I say this from
experience!).

I think a more valuable thing to do would to make it easier to learn high
level math (topology, abstract algebra) as math serves as the basis for
physics. On that note, that seems like it would be an exciting project for me
to embark on, with my perspective!

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ivan_ah
What do we need topology for? Is it for GR? And same for abstract algebra? is
this about the symmetries in high-energy physics?

I agree with you in general that one needs to learn serious math to advance in
physics, but it's always exciting to see university-level physics simplified
for the high school audience. Matrix QM is uniquely good candidate since it
only requires knowledge of linear algebra (see for example Figure 6, at the
bottom of page 4 here
[https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/conceptmap.pdf#pa...](https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/conceptmap.pdf#page=4)
).

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coolgod
Topology has some uses in physics, topological quantum computation is one of
its potential uses. More concrete applications are found in condensed matter
physics, such as topologically ordered materials and topological insulators.

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CaptP
Yes, topology in physics has some very exciting uses. My project actually
studies topological quantum error correction!

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_8091149529
A contrarian view: Quantum Computing would not be near the top of my list of
things to teach in high schools. The students would be better off learning
about scientific ideas that have a proven track record, and enable or explain
functioning technology that benefits the greater society. There would be
hundreds of topics to choose from.

Foot note: I acknowledge Quantum Computing is just a subfield of QIS, but the
abstract only talks about IBM Q and quantum algorithms.

~~~
ivan_ah
I don't think you view is contrarian. At least I wholeheartedly agree with
you, and I spent 7+ years doing work in QIS (five years ago). Obviously _if_
quantum computers start to do something useful within our lifetime it will be
an interesting development, but that's a big _if_ right now and also not clear
if the new interesting stuff that comes out of QC will actually be useful for
something.

Also, I don't this think we're alone thinking QC is overhyped, this comment
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18961967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18961967)
links to a report by NAS that is rather lukewarm if not cold on the prospects.

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mhh__
I kind of wish I didn't learn any advanced physics (I was reading Landau and
Lifshitz when I was 14) in high school. It was constantly distracting to know
how to derive everything (which meant skipping exercises), which combined with
at least having many of the symptoms of ADHD, meant I never did any work and
underperformed in every exam bar one.

That reading lead to me going up from the lowest math set to the top one but I
wonder if I am over-read but not intelligent enough to have been allowed to
study it on the natural progression. I was the only student in my class to
display (publicly) any intuition or passion but I probably got some of the
worst results.

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lowdose
> which combined with at least having many of the symptoms of ADHD

Have that diagnose verified. If you have ADHD your self confidence is based on
life experience without proper medication.

With medication you would have done the exercises. Everyday in life you will
be required to do some kind of exercise to make progress so I would like to
advice you to at least explore getting some help on this matter.

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babkayaga
does anyone have a link to the teaching material itself?

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mathgenius
You might like to check out Terry Rudolph's book, "Q is for quantum".

