CQD stand at the Imperial Festival

BINGO! Quantum fun and games at the Imperial Festival

The Imperial Festival is an annual science festival which gives the public a chance to go behind the scenes and explore all the ground breaking science happening at Imperial College. This year’s festival was held over the weekend of the 6th and 7th May, with over 15,000 members of the public visiting Imperial College. Alex Clark along with students and staff from the Centre for Doctoral Training in Controlled Quantum Dynamics (CQD) hosted a stand in the Discovery Zone discussing how quantum mechanics can be taken from the lab and into the real world with technologies such as quantum sensing, cryptography and computing. Not only does the stand allow us to directly communicate our research to the public, but it also gives postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers an opportunity to practice and develop their public engagement skills.

The stand ran a game of ‘Quantum Bingo’ using a quantum random number generator. A fibre-coupled laser was attenuated to the single photon level and split at a fibre beam splitter which was connected to two single photon detectors. Detection at either output produced 0’s and 1’s at random and hence produced a binary number in the range 0 to 63. Using this demo allowed the public to get hands on with a simple quantum experimental set-up, formed the basis of discussion between the public and the visitors to the festival, and allowed a number of visitors to win popular science books as prizes throughout the weekend. Monitoring the number of participants who played Quantum Bingo showed that more than 350 members of the public interacted with the volunteers on the stand.