Annual Report: Virtual Quarknet Group 2021

Submitted by dmcdermott
Published: | Group(s):
Virtual QuarkNet Center

 

Summer Meeting Theme: Quantum Computing and Coding in the Physics Classroom

Attendance: 12 teachers

Mentors; Danielle, Antonio

Teachers: James Small, Darwin Smith, Kathy Kowski, Joel Klammer, David Trapp (lead), Marteen Nolan, Alison Bulson, Charlie Payne, Nicole Preiser, Debbie Gremmelsbacher, Megan Alvord, Michael Wadness (lead)


Overview: Our group met monthly thoughout the year in an online environment.  We held Sunday evening meetings on Oct. 11, Nov. 15, Jan. 24, Feb. 28 (guest speaker Antoine Love - former group member - on mathematics, machine learning, and curve fitting as appropriate for the physics classroom), Mar. 21 (guest speaker Mark Hannum on teaching Quantum Computing) and Apr. 25th.  We cancelled Sept. and Dec. meetings to mitigate online meeting fatigue.  Many of our conversations involved the changes in our lives and classrooms due to COVID-19 until we shifted to our guest speakers for our spring meetings.

Summer Meeting: Our 2021 Virtual QN Summer Workshop met via Zoom – with synchronous online activities moderated by teachers Charlie Payne and Megan Alvord.  There conversations ranging from technical questions to the usual jokes by unusual geeks.  We convened for two days, and hosted a talk by quantum computing theorist M. Burak Sahinoglu, postdoctoral scholar in Los Alamos National Laboratory's Theoretical division, and hands-on coding sessions with Charlie Payne and QuarkNet Coding Fellow Adam LaMee.  We also had a free-ranging conversion with mentors Danielle McDermott and Antonio Delgado.  Because we missed the usual casual meeting time - meals and outings - we had a pre-meeting Zoom social hour to broaden the times and topics of participation.  We learned a lot, and have plenty of new coding tricks for our classrooms.

Our workshop learning objectives and schedule are available at:
https://quarknet.org/content/virtual-quarknet-summer-2021-workshop-quantum-computing-and-coding

During our meeting we learned to play quantum tic tac toe and wrote some quantum algorithms ;)