Some parents would probably baulk at the idea of teaching their 11-year-old about quantum mechanics, but here at Physics World we believe that it’s never too early to ponder the weirdness of the quantum world. Indeed, children tend to have fewer preconceptions about the world around them, so starting young could make them “quantum native” and destined for a lucrative career in quantum technology.
If that’s the career path you have in mind for your little ones, you are in luck because physicists at the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence for Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter have created a mobile phone app that introduces quantum mechanics to children 11 and older. Called “Kitty Q — a quantum adventure” after Schrödinger’s famous cat, the app serves up 20 different puzzles that each teach something about quantum physics.
The researchers say that Kitty Q is aimed at children and young teens because this the age at which young people develop their views of science. In particular, the team hope that Kitty Q will help encourage girls to study physics and other sciences where they are currently underrepresented.
Kitty Q will be launched later this month, but you can get a preview here.
Staying on physics education, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) in Canada asked teachers to make videos about their favourite science demonstrations that you can do in your kitchen. The PI has put the eight submissions on its website and is asking the public to vote for their favourites.
The demos include a lesson on entropy using nuts and raisins, building your own hydrometer – demonstrated by a winemaker – and how to measure the acceleration due to gravity using a plastic bag and a mobile phone (as shown in the above video). You can watch all the videos and vote here.
Fantastical adventures
Baron Munchausen is a fictional character created in the 18th century by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe. The Baron is famous for his fantastical adventures such as riding a cannonball, travelling to the Moon and extracting himself and the horse he is sitting on from quicksand by pulling up on his own hair.
Now I’m guessing that the majority of 11-year-olds know that the latter is an impossible feat, but that hasn’t stopped Matthias Schmidt and Sophie Hermann from the University of Bayreuth in Germany from writing a paper that offers “a new and more comprehensive refutation” of Munchausen’s rescue.
The paper has been uploaded to the arXiv preprint server and their refutation involves the application of Noether’s theorem to statistical mechanics – something that is probably beyond the comprehension of most 11-year-olds.