The zine format — miniature, self-printed booklets — is typically associated with punk rock, comics, and other DIY cultures. But a new outreach effort from the UChicago CS research group Enabling Practical-Scale Quantum Computation (EPiQC) utilizes zines to educate students and the public about the highest of tech: quantum physics and computing.
So far, a team of EPiQC staff, undergraduate and graduate students, and freelance artists have produced 8 zines, covering topics from the history of quantum computing to superposition, entanglement, and reversibility. With playful illustrations and helpful examples, the issues aim to break down quantum computing into digestible servings for non-scientists and scientists alike...in just eight pages apiece.
The idea started with comic books, Franklin said, with the EPiQC outreach team brainstorming superheroes with powers inspired by quantum principles such as the ability to transform between a wave and a solid form. But over time, the concept evolved to the more open format of the zine, where comic elements can exist next to mathematical equations, code snippets, and other more technical details.
Each issue is designed to cover multiple audiences, with the first third an introduction for a general audience, the middle section appealing to readers with a background in computer science, and the final pages diving deeper to cover a core concept from today’s quantum computing research.
For example, a zine on superposition — the concept that quantum states can be described as the sum of multiple distinct states — starts with the common analogy of a spinning coin, equally likely to land as heads or tails. From there, it introduces one of the best-known quantum algorithms, Grover’s search algorithm, which underlies the potential use of quantum computers to quickly find a particular variable in a large dataset. Finally, it describes the Hadamard gate, how quantum scientists notate the coin-flip like superposition of a single qubit.
After handing out some of the earliest zines at a National Science Foundation event, they received broader attention on the Computing Community Consortium blog, where chair Mark D. Hill praised the project as a unique approach to a dense, but increasingly trendy topic in computing.
The EPiQC zine team already has plans for the next few installments, Franklin said, and continue to refine the already-published issues for greater clarity and different initiatives, such as the “quantum computing in a box” curriculum they’re developing for museums. And the education is bidirectional; by brainstorming different approaches to explaining quantum concepts and testing ideas on each other, they’ve expanded their own knowledge as well.
The zines were written by Franklin, education outreach director Randall Landsberg, graduate student Kartik Singhal, undergraduate student Elizabeth Crowdus, and curriculum development specialist Jen Palmer Hellige. Art was created by computer science undergraduates Woorin Jang and Ruolin Zheng and artist Leona Perine.
Further coverage of the EPiQC zines can be found at HPCWire.