The super thinkers got the opportunity to visit the quantum engineering lab at NYU. Quantum computing is an exponential jump in computing from even the best supercomputers that exist today. It's the next holy grail in computing and a number of academic labs, and companies have been working on it for the past few decades. Google just announced a big milestone in this area and here's a video of it if you're interested.
It's very nicely tied to our ice unit as well. The quantum chips have to be cooled to VERY low temperatures (colder than space!) to operate them. The 'fridge' for it works with liquid Helium which has a temperature of just a few degrees above absolute zero.
Joe Yuan a PhD student at the lab gave us a tour of 3 things:
1) The Molecular Beam Epitaxy machine where the wafers for the chips are made. In this machine you can deposit semiconductor material one atomic layer at a time!
2) An extremely cold fridge where this group studies some fundamental properties of the semiconductors to design quantum chips. These fridges can cool the quantum chips to a fraction above absolute temperature of -459.67F
3) A cool experiment with superconducting material that can levitate on top of magnets when cooled to liquid nitrogen temperature. About -320F.
Ava was our photographer. She took some amazing pictures and videos. Here they are
