Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - Canadian the first to make a quantum computer

Hack&Lube · 02-09-2007, 11:09 AM

As dumbed down as possible:

Normal computers and basically everything electronic and digital that you know:

Basically it's just a set of switches that go on and off as that's how it all started, switches going on and off on electrical circuits. Nowadays, you have billions and trillions of switches that go on and off inside a normal comptuer. But because everything is defined in terms of on and off, it can only think in binary which is where the 1 and 0 comes from. 1 is on, 0 is off. Every set of instructions a computer (and even your pocket calculator) processes is just a series of 1s and 0s.

Quantum computers are more difficult to explain. They basically work of the quantum state of particles and if you can image it, you can have 1 and 0 and everything in between. Lets just say that a quantum computer would be so exponentially more powerful, its hard to imagine.

02-09-2007, 11:09 AM	#10
Hack&Lube Atomic Nerd Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Calgary Exp:	As dumbed down as possible: Normal computers and basically everything electronic and digital that you know: Basically it's just a set of switches that go on and off as that's how it all started, switches going on and off on electrical circuits. Nowadays, you have billions and trillions of switches that go on and off inside a normal comptuer. But because everything is defined in terms of on and off, it can only think in binary which is where the 1 and 0 comes from. 1 is on, 0 is off. Every set of instructions a computer (and even your pocket calculator) processes is just a series of 1s and 0s. Quantum computers are more difficult to explain. They basically work of the quantum state of particles and if you can image it, you can have 1 and 0 and everything in between. Lets just say that a quantum computer would be so exponentially more powerful, its hard to imagine. Last edited by Hack&Lube; 02-09-2007 at 11:15 AM.