Quantum World

4.0 credits

Spooky action at a distance. A cat that’s both dead and alive. Ephemeral objects that cease to exist when you stop looking at them. These oddities are not fictions but based on our most accurate physical theory of how matter behaves: Quantum Mechanics. This is an introductory course designed for students in the humanities and social sciences who are interested to learn about the history of Quantum Mechanics, the philosophy behind its startling predictions, and the very real technologies that depend on it. The course will focus on a conceptual understanding through demonstrations, with minimal mathematics, of topics that include the fascinating properties of atoms and subatomic particles; the double slit experiment, wave-particle duality, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle; the philosophies of quantum mechanics, including the Copenhagen and Many-Worlds interpretations; what quantum information means for computers, and the future of Artificial Intelligence.