Confused about quantum? New exhibit at The Museum explains it for people of all ages

The cat in the picture is both asleep and awake.

The conundrum that is Schrdiner's Cat is one of the first interactive displays people see when they enter Quantum: The Exhibition at The Museum in downtown Kitchener.

"It shows the idea of quantum superposition," Martin Laforest, senior manager of scientific outreach at the University of Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), said last week while taking CBC News on a tour of the new exhibit.

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"When you walk in, what you see are two overlapping pictures, one of a sleeping cat and one of an awake cat," he said, acknowledging in physicist Erwin Schrdinger's experiment, the cat was considered both dead and alive until the box was opened.

As Laforest turns the handle of the display, the image of the cat changes.

"You can keep on turning and it always goes between those three ideas, but the key one is when you're in the middle and see you both of them it's in the concept of superposition."

'It's a simple theory'

Quantum mechanics is something people may shy away from because they think it's complicated.

But Tobi Day-Hamilton, the association director of communications and strategic initiatives at IQC, said the point of the exhibit is to show that's not the case.

"We wanted to really capture people's imagination and their curiosity about the world around them. We hear a lot that people think quantum mechanics is difficult, it's intimidating, it's hard, but we know that it's not. It's a simple theory, it's a simple way to look at things and it's really the way the world works," she said.

"The exhibit itself is really for everyone. You can be a small child working with some of the interactives, playing with some of the games, but it's really targeted from anywhere from seven or eight years old all the way through to science enthusiasts."

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Good place for exhibit to start

David Marskell said when the idea of the exhibit was brought to The Museum, he couldn't think of a better place for it to go.

"I knew that quantum in this community would have a better chance of landing and being relevant," The Museum's CEO said.

Since opening on October 14, he said they have seen lots of interest from people coming into The Museum and the number of school groups have tripled because of the exhibit.

"There's a very good indicator that it will be a very successful show and I'm just delighted and I hope people take some time to go through the exhibit, because you really do need to sort of understand it and interact with it to benefit from the rich data that is there," he said.

Particles and waves in quantum

The exhibit took 18 months to come together because those involved professors, researchers, students and staff wanted to make sure everything was simple, but accurate.

During the tour, Laforest points out the double slit experiment interactive.

"The double slit experiment is a very famous experiment in science and in quantum mechanics that really brings the essence of quantum mechanics," he said.

When people come here, they might not fully grasp all of quantum mechanics. We cannot do that with a museum exhibit. But they will grasp how things are different.- Martin Laforest of the Institute for Quantum Computing

"What's at the heart of quantum mechanics is the concept of wave particle duality."

Huh?

"In the world that we live in, things are either a particle, so like a ball, or they're either a wave, like a water wave," Laforest explained.

"And those things behave quite differently, a ball and a wave don't behave the same way. But in quantum mechanics, there's no distinction anymore. Everything is a particle, but the particle behaves like they were waves and the double slit experiment really shows that."

Runs until January1

You won't come out of the exhibition a quantum expert, Laforest said.

"When people come here, they might not fully grasp all of quantum mechanics. We cannot do that with a museum exhibit. But they will grasp how things are different, how quantum mechanics acts in a very counter-intuitive ways," he said.

"One of the difficulties of explaining quantum mechanics is that, quantum phenomenon literally lives outside our world, so there's nothing in our everyday experience that prepares us to fully grasp what quantum mechanics is and what quantum phenomenonare," he said.

"If I use analogies, then I'm explaining the regular world, not the quantum world."

The exhibit will be at The Museum until January 1 and after that, it will tour the country as part of the Canada 150 celebrations.

The game Quantum Cats is also part of the exhibit. Check it out below: