BElgic physicist and musician prof Bob Coecke, 55, wants to teach quantum physics to a mass audience. The paradox-filled theory describing the microscopic realm has become a staple of science fiction, from Marvel’s Ant-Man to the multiple Oscar winner Everything Everywhere Everything at once. It is famously bizarre and in the UK the subject is mostly reserved for undergraduates specializing in physics because it grapples with complicated mathematics. But Coecke, a former Oxford professordesigned a math-free framework using diagrams for total beginners, detailed in Quantum in pictures, his book with Dr Stefano Gogioso published earlier this year. Over the summer, they ran an educational experiment, teaching the pictorial method to British schoolchildren – who then beat the average exam scores of Oxford University’s postgraduate physics students.
Quantum physics is notoriously esoteric. Why should most people even want to study it?
Think AI. Think about how screwed up the world is now. Billion-dollar companies are in charge of a revolution that can control the world and no one understands what they are doing. I used to be an Oxford professor for 20 years and now I work in industry, with Quantinuum, building quantum computers [machines designed to exploit subatomic physics to one day outperform conventional computers]. We want people to understand what we do from the beginning, before the technology becomes big. We want to vote [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] more inclusive, make quantum more inclusive. It’s completely counter-intuitive, but within industry I can now do this educational experiment.
Your educational experiment involved 54 school children, aged 15-17, randomly selected from approx. 1,000 applicants, from 36 UK schools – mostly state schools. The teenagers spent two hours a week in online classes and after eight weeks were given a test with questions from an Oxford postgraduate quantum physics exam. More than 80% of the pupils passed and about half achieved a distinction. Were you surprised by their success?
At one point I was going to turn the whole thing off because I thought it was going to be a total disaster. We originally wanted the children to communicate with each other on social media or online, but this was not allowed due to the ethical guidelines for the experiment. I thought, what kind of educational experience is it if you can’t talk to each other?
This is the Covid generation: none of them have their cameras on [for the online classes], so we were looking at a black screen. None of them asked questions with their voices, they just typed. It was a difficult teaching challenge by any standards. We also saw a self-esteem problem in the students. But most kids liked that we announced that you don’t need a complex math background. The math was a barrier for children who wanted access to this knowledge.
And then we got the numbers back. They did significantly better than what we see from college level students. Exams are blind marked so we don’t know how many entered with the intention of taking Voice. We are processing that data now.
How did you come up with this ‘quantum pictorialism’ method? Was it originally aimed at kids and beginners?
I am a very visual person. I am not only a quantum physicist, I am an artist and musician. In fact, the only reason I got into quantum physics was because I wanted to support my music career – my rock/metal/electronica fusion band, Black Tish, released two albums this year. I got a job at Oxford University’s computer science department in the 1990s and my senior colleague Samson Abramsky told me that we needed a high-level programming language for [future] quantum computers. For normal computers, you program in zeros and ones, but most people don’t understand how to do that. But everyone understands how to use an iPhone. We wanted the equivalent of an iPhone interface for quantum computer programming. So Abramsky and I published a new formalism of quantum mechanics in 2004 based on “category theory” [a well-established branch of mathematics that uses diagrams to describe collections of objects].
I then developed it over the years, with others, and I wrote a book about it for physicists in 2017 with Aleks Kissinger. But the worst people to teach are theoretical physicists. They have so much to learn. Half of the mainstream people in quantum computing said, “You’re doing things with silly pictures, it can’t be useful, it’s too simple!” And the other half said, “Category theory is so hard, it can’t be useful, it’s too complicated!” It took years to get rid of the stigma that it was too complicated. So I wrote this new book with Stefano, who did all the pictures, specifically to do this experiment, to prove that it’s so easy, kids can do it and outperform Oxford graduate students.
We hear about so many weird and wonderful things quantum physics:A cat in a box can be dead and alive at the same time, until you look at it; particles can be in two places at once unless their position is measured; information can be “teleported” between quantum systems. How do you convey these processes using only pictures?
It’s simple. That’s all sign of quantum circuits: boxes connected by wires [to demonstrate quantum phenomena]. Teleporting is just moving boxes along a wire. Mates are represented by boxes called “spiders” that have many legs, or threads, sticking out. A quantum particle that can be in two places at once before being measured is drawn as two legs going into a spider – the spider’s body represents the measurement – and there is one leg coming out the other end, which is the outcome.
What are your hopes for quantum pictorialism in the future?
I have been approached by people in the Australian and Greek governments, in their education departments, who are interested in implementing this. I am also passionate about taking it into Africa. It’s early days, but we’re planning something there.
I started to change the way quantum mechanics is understood, and it is easier to convince children than adults. They have no preconceptions. So maybe the next generation will carry it forward. As one of the founders of quantum physics, Max Planck, once said, “Science advances one funeral at a time.”
