On 9th March four LEH students attended the UCL lecture: What is a Quantum Computer?

In a packed lecture theatre, Prof. Dan Brown discussed the action of conventional computers and explained the need for Quantum Computers. The professor explored the action of logic gates and showed us a few physical constructions that emulated the action of transistor based decision mechanisms.  These included LEGO logic gates produced by Randomwraith.com, String computing elements by Alex Gorischek, and the turingtumble machine.

He went on to discuss the limitations of classical computers and showed us that their processing time rose exponentially as progressively larger numbers were factorised. This is why quantum computers are needed. Professor Brown discussed the algorithms that quantum computers could run and discussed the advancements and restrictions that their development had experienced. He advised us all to register with https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/  so that we could develop our own programs to run on IBM’s quantum devices.

We all found the lecture to be entertaining, thought provoking, and educational and are looking forward to attending further UCL science lectures in the coming weeks.

By Mr Brittain – Teacher of Physics