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Kindergarten Quantum Mechanics | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com · 2,099 words · saved by 1 readers

"Experiment. Consider ten children of ages between six and ten and consider ten high-school teachers of physics and mathematics. The high-school teachers of physics and mathematics will have all the time they require to refresh their quantum mechanics background, and also to update it with regard to recent developments in quantum information. The children on the other hand will have quantum theory explained in terms of the graphical formalism. Both teams will be given a certain set of questions, for the children formulated in diagrammatic language, and for the teachers in the usual quantum mechanical formalism. Whoever solves the most problems and solves them in the fastest time wins. If the diagrammatic language is much more intuitive, it should in principle be possible for the children to win."

Apparently there is an actual experiment on six-year-olds taking place [1,2]: "Experiment. Consider ten children of ages between six and ten and consider ten high-school teachers of physics and mathematics. The high-school teachers of physics and mathematics will have all the time they require to refresh their quantum mechanics background, and also to update it with regard to recent developments in quantum information. The children on the other hand will have quantum theory explained in terms of the graphical formalism. Both teams will be given a certain set of questions, for the children…

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