The Grok Academy Ltd has announced a new Science and Digital Technologies Challenge for Australia’s students. It is teaming up with Telstra, Commonwealth Bank and Silicon Quantum Computing to come up with an Introduction to Quantum Computing (login required). Karsten, Dominic, Penny, Owen from The Grok Academy tell us all about it.
Now, you might think. Isn’t this just too far out? How could this even remotely connect with the Australian Curriculum and be accessible to high school students?
Let’s take a look.
The course is a blend of computing, science, mathematics and industry careers. It explores how conventional computers work and how they represent data in binary. There are some challenging and relevant topics, such as cryptography, climate change and drug development, and they pose real challenges for today’s computers. To solve them, we need not just more more computing power, we need to re-think how computers work.
We take students on a journey into the world of the microcosmos. We go deep into atoms and explore the characteristics of electrons. We meet magnetism and learn how to put it to use for computing.
A long the way, students journey into the labs at SQC through a virtual tour and perform virtual experiments on some of SQC’s equipment from the safety of their own computers. For example, we let students make components of a quantum computer.
Besides the tiny world, students explore temperature properties and what temperature is at the atomic level. We then go into outer space in search of the coldest place in the Universe, which leads us back to Earth. In the extreme cold of a cryogenic freezer, students control individual electrons through electromagnetic waves and learn about some weird quantum concepts, such as superposition and entanglement.
For teachers, we will soon be releasing a great lesson plan that provides a good overview and entry points into the course and curriculum mapping.
The Quantum Computing Challenge is freely available for year 5–12 Australian students via the Grok Academy website. To get started with student account setup, read our Teacher Grok-it Guide.
We hope you can see the curriculum relevance and give this exciting Challenge a go with your students. Reach out to us if you have any questions.
Until next time, Karsten, Dominic, Penny, Owen – Grok Academy Ltd.
No Electrons were hurt in the making of this challenge.
Warning: May contain traces of cutting edge science.
For further information visit, grokacademy.org
