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Quantum Penny Flip: an open source serious game for quantum computingassessment

Esteban Zapirain, Stella Maris Massa, Juan P. Cardoso

Published Jan 1, 2019• 6 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Quantum computing bases on the exploitation of quantum mechanics to create computation systems. It inherits its benefits from quantum mechanics, but also its difficulties: quantum mechanics are counter-intuitive and hard to learn or even accept, even for its iconic mentors. This makes teaching quantum computing very challenging. Serious games are games with a serious purpose, such as learning, training or social awareness. The present work describes the development of a serious game for the purpose of learning quantum computing concepts. It deals with qubits, qubit states, superposition and the flip and Hadamard gates. The game was made freely available to play with few system requirements to get to a broad audience. Also, its source code was made publicly available to modify and redistribute with no strings attached. The authors feel that the objectives of this work were met, but there is further work to be done regarding the evaluation and improvement of the game.

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Quantum computing bases on the exploitation of quantum mechanics to create computation systems. It inherits its benefits from quantum mechanics, but also its difficulties: quantum mechanics are counter-intuitive and hard to learn or even accept, even for its iconic mentors. This makes teaching quantum computing very challenging. Serious games are games with a serious purpose, such as learning, training or social awareness. The present work describes the development of a serious game for the purpose of learning quantum computing concepts. It deals with qubits, qubit states, superposition and the flip and Hadamard gates. The game was made freely available to play with few system requirements to get to a broad audience. Also, its source code was made publicly available to modify and redistribute with no strings attached. The authors feel that the objectives of this work were met, but there is further work to be done regarding the evaluation and improvement of the game.
The high public attention given to quantum computing shows that it is perceived as an interesting topic. We want to utilize this motivating effect for the teaching and learning of quantum physics. Specifically, we want to take advantage of the access to real quantum computers, which various providers make available free of charge. We show a direct and straightforward way to use quantum computers in an introductory course on quantum physics. We use an algorithm that solves a simple and easily understandable problem while providing a quantum advantage. The algorithm we propose is a simple game in which the use of quantum physics offers a winning advantage. The game is called Quantum Penny Flip and was proposed by David A. Meyer back in 1999. It can be easily reformulated to be described by quantum gates. We can therefore use it to teach the programming of a quantum computer. We demonstrate its implementation in IBM's Quantum Composer.
Education is vital to perpetuating knowledge, assisting in the discovery of innovations that will result in new technologies. As these technologies become more prevalent, so has, and will, the presence of games with the purpose of teaching important concepts, such as STEM, or even technologically, focused ones. In this paper,Q′Q^{\prime}Q′Game, a game developed to teach quantum computing basics, encourages learning in a fun and engaging way. Through the introduction of qubits and superposition, as well as the basic essential quantum gates,Q′Q^{\prime}Q′Game covers the fundamentals of quantum computing. From this base knowledge, players can explore more complex concepts in the field. Furthermore, this paper describes howQ′Q^{\prime}Q′Game can be used as a unique learning tool and experience to create interest in the young generation towards quantum computing.
Quantum computers are a new generation of computers, whose principles for designing algorithms have already been defined, despite their hardware implementation still being under development. Attracting more scientists to the field is crucial to developing new algorithms in order to make the most of quantum computers once they are available. Serious games can contribute a lot to this effort. This article focuses on the pilot evaluation of the Quantum Escape serious game, which is based on a 3D format for motivating students and a conceptual simplification strategy for making abstract concepts accessible. Specifically, the game design is grounded in the established Four-Dimensional framework, and it aims to transform abstract concepts like superposition and entanglement, as well as common quantum gates, into intuitive puzzles presented through probabilities. The design of Quantum Escape was evaluated by 27 Computer Science students and graduates, in terms of perceived player experience and perceived short-term learning using a questionnaire based on the established MEEGA+ evaluation framework. The design choices of Quantum Escape seem to be validated, since most novice participants found the game understandable and requiring no prior knowledge, while participants with relevant background in quantum computing also largely endorsed the content’s accuracy. Limitations in the extent of quantum computing concepts and the number of participants dictate further development and evaluation of the game.
This paper introduces fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics and quantum computing through the quantum coin-flipping paradox. By connecting historical developments such as Planck’s quantum hypothesis, wave-particle duality, and the double-slit experiment with modern quantum circuits implemented in Qiskit, the work provides a pedagogical and self-contained introduction to superposition and quantum advantage. The article combines theoretical explanation, experimental demonstrations, and computational implementations to make quantum computing accessible to a broad audience.
Abstract Quantum computers are on the verge of becoming a commercially available reality. They represent a paradigm shift in computing, with a steep learning gradient. The creation of games is a way to ease the transition for beginners. We present a game similar to the Poker variant Texas hold ’em with the intention to serve as an engaging pedagogical tool to learn the basics rules of quantum computing. The concepts of quantum states, quantum operations and measurement can be learned in a playful manner. The difference to the classical variant is that the community cards are replaced by a quantum register that is “randomly” initialized, and the cards for each player are replaced by quantum gates, randomly drawn from a set of available gates. Each player can create a quantum circuit with their cards, with the aim to maximize the number of 1’s that are measured in the computational basis. The basic concepts of superposition, entanglement and quantum gates are employed. We provide a proof-of-concept implementation using Qiskit (Aleksandrowicz et al. in An open-source framework for quantum computing, 2019). A comparison of the results for the created circuits using a simulator and IBM machines is conducted, showing that error rates on contemporary quantum computers are still very high. For the success of noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) computers, improvements on the error rates and error mitigation techniques are necessary, even for simple circuits. We show that quantum error mitigation (QEM) techniques can be used to improve expectation values of observables on real quantum devices.
This paper presents a minimalist teaching-learning sequence for quantum computation in secondary education (5 × 60 minutes) grounded in the photon polarization approach. The framework has been tailored to the secondary school level education omitting complex numbers, matrices, and programming while relying on physics concepts with which students are already familiar from photon polarization. Employing a design-based research methodology, we identified the minimal set of concepts necessary for conceptual understanding: Dirac notation, the X and H quantum gates, and the quantum advantage demonstrated using the penny flip game as an example, which was tested on a real quantum computer. Students also explore the B92 cryptographic protocol and quantum entanglement in this course.