April 14, 2023 marks the second official World Quantum Day. This year there is so much activity initiated by Q-12 partners and collaborators. We cannot possibly capture it in a single post! The official World Quantum Day website is here and for live updates, follow #WorldQuantumDay. If you want to know about the US efforts for World Quantum Day and more generally, the National Quantum Initiative, check out quantum.gov. In this post, which we will update throughout the day, we are sharing some of the efforts aimed at K-12 and the public that can help you celebrate quantum every day, including Friday, April 14!
Let’s start with this year’s World Quantum Day video, which we put together with so much help from people across industry, government, and academia. It was a blast to make this and we truly appreciate LeVar Burton joining us as a guide through different facets of quantum information science and engineering. Q-12 partners gathered questions from teachers and students and we sent them to people at different stages of their careers. This video is a short compilation of their answers. We will roll out the full answers, which include more speakers and some deep dives into quantum science, during the rest of 2023. Astronaut Josh Cassada even recorded answers while aboard the International Space Station for this project. Thanks so much to all of the contributors and people who worked on this video!
World Quantum Day is when we kick off QuanTime 2023, which lasts for six weeks. This program serves to share community resources with classrooms directly, for free. Google Quantum AI’s “The Qubit Game” is part of QuanTime, and they announced today that they are expanding their support for teachers in California. In addition, this year the American Physical Society launched quantum-to-go, connecting classrooms across the country with quantum experts. QuanTime has a section to add resources that we learn about through World Quantum Day and of course throughout the year.
NASA SCaN has been working with Q-12 on the video but also contributed to QuanTime this year with printable activities for the younger learners of K-12. They also have released a cool comic covering some of the quantum science at work! It’s available here and we embedded it below.
Social media has been buzzing all week, especially after Jeopardy! aired on Monday with a quantum science category. If you didn’t catch the clues, we will add a link here when they come out again on Friday. If you are hanging on social, then you can check out Intel’s scheduled event in Twitter Spaces Event https://twitter.com/intelnews/status/1643333680763650048. While the event isn’t for K-12 learners most likely, the team has also previously designed kits and videos as part of the broader Intel Future Skills program. There are also several Reddit AMA’s scheduled, including from the Joint Quantum Institute and Princeton. These are great online events to get your questions answered whether you are a teacher or not.
Our video of course is not the only one. We know there are many coming out and we will be sharing K-12-appropriate content as the day goes on. For high schoolers, the Chicago Quantum Exchange has released a new series, supported by Q-12 Partner Boeing, called “Quick Quantum,” and here is the promo.
April 14 is just the start. There are events after Friday, including from the UW–Madison Department of Physics. They are hosting their annual Physics Fair on April 15 in conjunction with World Quantum Day. During the event, visitors will be able to interact with the Wonders of Quantum Physics electron transition activity (as seen through QuanTime), view a new invisible art exhibit in the Ingersoll Physics Museum that utilizes polarized light, and check out several quantum-inspired demonstrations including an exploration of atomic spectra, the Meissner effect, qubit toy blocks, and more!
This post was updated last at 3:45 pm Central Time Friday April 14.
