Quantum computing by McKade

Many ask the question “what exactly is a quantum computer?”. To answer that I am going to compare it to a classical computer. Here you will find a short description for a basic understanding of the device you are currently using. The so-called classical computer takes in information via a single piece of data called a bit. A bit is either the absence or the presence of electricity. We humans look at this as a 0 or a 1, also known as binary. A bit can only store a 0 or 1 at a time. While it may seem like you couldn’t do much with binary, the title of this page is in binary and spells out “quantum computing”, “which is really cool” - Professor Newman (somewhat out of context). With these 0’s and 1’s, you’re currently able access the information that is within this web page.

Moving on to quantum computers is where things start to get interesting. A quantum computer doesn’t use classical bits, instead it uses something called a qubit, short for quantum bit. Qubits are interesting because they basically are the metamorphmagus of the computer science world, and yes, I did just use a fictional reference for a non-fictional science. This means that a qubit, unlike the bit, isn’t limited to two states it can either be 0 or 1, this is called super position and we will go into further detail on this in the physics portion.