Quantum Friend

Highlights of the activity

1. In this activity, the instructor is on the phone with a friend. In small groups, the students must work together to help the friend on the phone specify what arbitrary vector he or she has.
2. Students will learn how to change vectors into bra-ket notation.
3. Students will learn how to find a state vector given only three square norms of the vector.

Reasons to spend class time on the activity

This activity challenges students to move between different representations of physical situations to make problem-solving more efficient. The groups of students will also see how convenient bra-ket notation is, particularly for keeping track of which values are scalars and which are vectors and for finding the probability that a quantum system is in some particular state. Students will also have the opportunity to see how a state vector can be found from knowing only the square of the norms.

Reflections

• Reflections from the original implementation.

• Reflections from "official" adapters/adopters.

• Reflections from the general public.

Instructor's Guide

• Wiki version