Quantum Physics Literacy Aimed at K12 and the General Public

Abstract

Educating K12 students and general public in quantum physics represents an evitable must no longer since quantum technologies are going to revolutionize our lives. Quantum literacy is a formidable challenge and an extraordinary opportunity for a massive cultural uplift, where citizens learn how to engender creativity and practice a new way of thinking, essential for smart community building. Scientific thinking hinges on analyzing facts and creating understanding, and it is then formulated with the dense mathematical language for later fact checking. Within classical physics, learners’ intuition may in principle be educated via classroom demonstrations of everyday-life phenomena. Their understanding can even be framed with the mathematics suited to their instruction degree. For quantum physics, on the contrary, we have no experience of quantum phenomena and the required mathematics is beyond non-expert reach. Therefore, educating intuition needs imagination. Without rooting to experiments and some degree of formal framing, educators face the risk to provide only evanescent tales, often misled, while resorting to familiar analogies. Here, we report on the realization of QPlayLearn, an online platform conceived to explicitly address challenges and opportunities of massive quantum literacy. QPlayLearn’s mission is to provide multilevel education on quantum science and technologies to anyone, regardless of age and background. To this aim, innovative interactive tools enhance the learning process effectiveness, fun, and accessibility, while remaining grounded on scientific correctness. Examples are games for basic quantum physics teaching, on-purpose designed animations, and easy-to-understand explanations on terminology and concepts by global experts. As a strategy for massive cultural change, QPlayLearn offers diversified content for different target groups, from primary school all the way to university physics students. It is addressed also to companies wishing to understand the potential of the emergent quantum industry, journalists, and policymakers needing to seize what quantum technologies are about, as well as all quantum science enthusiasts.

Visualizing quantum mechanics in an interactive simulation -- Virtual Lab by Quantum Flytrap

“…Virtual Lab has been used during several hackathons and other informal educational events and by individual users. As an easily embeddable tool, it has been used by external educational portals for quests and tutorials introducing quantum mechanics and quantum computing, including Qubit by Qubit, QPlayLearn, 86 and Quantencomputer für Schüler innen. 87 We have approximately 40 unique users per day, growing to 700 during events.…”

Quantum Physics Education Research over the Last Two Decades: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…Today, the second quantum revolution is underway [2]: In the upcoming years, products and applications based on the exploitation of quantum principles such as superposition or entanglement will emerge in many different ways [3]. Second generation quantum technologies, also referred to as Quantum technologies 2.0, such as quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing or quantum simulation, are said to have significant disruptive potential: "They hold the promise to affect dramatically our life overturning everything, from drug development, to cryptography, to data science and Artificial Intelligence" ( [4], p. 2). In short: "The future is quantum" (https://qt.eu/, accessed on 28 October 2021).…”

“…Besides scientific research, the commercialisation of quantum technologies requires training programmes for the future quantum workforce [5]. Moreover, students at high schools and the general public should also be educated in quantum physics [4]: On the one hand, because quantum physics is, among other things, particularly suitable for epistemological reflection [6,7] or for discussing the role of models in science [8]. On the other hand, to create awareness among the public for the importance of modern quantum technologies for their own lives [9] today and in the future.…”

“…In this study, we only focused on articles published in scientific journals so that future studies can also consider other sources, e.g., books or conference proceedings. 4.…”

Connecting Secondary School Quantum Physics and Nature of Science

“…Indeed, we have seen an increasing number of studies on innovative ways to teach QP in secondary schools in the last few years (Bitzenbauer & Meyn, 2020;Foti et al, 2021;Hughes et al, 2020;Michelini & Stefanel, 2021;Müller & Mishina, 2021;Satanassi et al, 2021;Woitzik, 2020). Most of these innovations are concerned with new technical or cognitive approaches to teaching QP concepts; students' epistemological problems rooted in their ideas about the nature of physics are rarely explicitly addressed.…”