Distributed by Films for the Humanities & Sciences, PO Box 2053, Princeton, NJ 08543-2053; 800-257-5126Produced by Candace Cameron, Shauna Jetty, Toni SherwoodDirected by Toni Sherwood2001, VHS, color, 53 min. This involving documentary presents a postdoctoral physics student’s attempt to measure heat flow at a quantum level. If successful, the experiment is a small step on the path to quantum computing. Keith Schwab’s three years of checking and rechecking results, and evaluating intermediate failures ends successfully. Tight interviews with Schwab, his advisors at Berkeley and Caltech, and fellow graduate students are honest and forthright. All freely express doubts, professional criticism and fear of failure. Their insight into what it takes to succeed is as important to the film's success as the actual experiment. The film also captures the elegance of pure science and satisfaction of carrying a project through to completion. Schwab accurately compares designing his experimental heat-conducting sample to creating a work of art. Unfortunately, the film is somewhat weakened by Schwab’s reality-television style confessional monologues about his failed marriage. The filmmakers obviously wanted to add drama by depicting the project’s pressures on the participants’ personal lives. These forced scenes cheapen an otherwise honest and compelling effort. The filmmakers do well on an obviously tight budget. Opening footage of Schwab quietly connecting his sample to the refrigerator help establish the theme of scientist as artist. Editing is crisp and clean. Cutting between Schwab’s initial failures in the lab and his participation in a shooting competition nicely portrays his tension and frustration. The Uncertainty Principle would make an interesting addition to a career resources collection for students considering advanced degrees in the sciences, and also a general undergraduate science collection.
Distributed by Films for the Humanities & Sciences, PO Box 2053, Princeton, NJ 08543-2053; 800-257-5126Produced by Candace Cameron, Shauna Jetty, Toni SherwoodDirected by Toni Sherwood2001, VHS, color, 53 min. This involving documentary presents a postdoctoral physics student’s attempt to measure heat flow at a quantum level. If successful, the experiment is a small step on the path to quantum computing. Keith Schwab’s three years of checking and rechecking results, and evaluating intermediate failures ends successfully. Tight interviews with Schwab, his advisors at Berkeley and Caltech, and fellow graduate students are honest and forthright. All freely express doubts, professional criticism and fear of failure. Their insight into what it takes to succeed is as important to the film's success as the actual experiment. The film also captures the elegance of pure science and satisfaction of carrying a project through to completion. Schwab accurately compares designing his experimental heat-conducting sample to creating a work of art. Unfortunately, the film is somewhat weakened by Schwab’s reality-television style confessional monologues about his failed marriage. The filmmakers obviously wanted to add drama by depicting the project’s pressures on the participants’ personal lives. These forced scenes cheapen an otherwise honest and compelling effort. The filmmakers do well on an obviously tight budget. Opening footage of Schwab quietly connecting his sample to the refrigerator help establish the theme of scientist as artist. Editing is crisp and clean. Cutting between Schwab’s initial failures in the lab and his participation in a shooting competition nicely portrays his tension and frustration. The Uncertainty Principle would make an interesting addition to a career resources collection for students considering advanced degrees in the sciences, and also a general undergraduate science collection.
Distributed by Films Media Group, 132 West 31st St., 17th Floor, New York, NY 10001; 800-257-5126Produced by Kate Dart & BBC FilmsDirected by Kate Dart2013, DVD, color, 50 min. Proceeding from the reality that codes and encryptions are at the heart of our computing, and so at the heart of our increasingly online society, this film showcases various scientists and mathematicians who are working to understand, break, or strengthen these codes – and sometimes trying to do all three at the same time. Starting with exploitations of cracks in software systems, first on the individual then the national scale, and then moving into exploring quantum mechanics, each of the people in this documentary act as brief guides to not only what is possible in cryptography, but how ongoing experimentation (both legal and illegal) is pushing the boundaries of how codes can be hacked, and how better codes can be created. The structure of the documentary benefits from being straightforward, starting with simple codes and hacks, then progressing towards more complexity and science-based cryptography in the middle, and ending with the applications of all these methods in the criminal, then geopolitical world. Each featured interviewee gets 7-8 minutes to tell their story. Some are personal, like the journalist who works for Wired magazine and got his online life hacked and deleted, while others are mostly theoretical, like the head of a lab at MIT who can prove mathematically how to keep a code’s key secret by encoding it onto photons and comparing those photons pre- and post-transmission. Some stories are a mix of both, like the mathematician at UC-Berkeley whose dissertation was to both postulate and then to build a “basic” working quantum computer. The filmmakers have done a good job selecting interesting stories within all these types to present. While the interviewees and their stories are the stars of this film, the effects occasionally threaten to overshadow them. The effects budget must have been significant, as throughout the documentary many effects shots (most of them effective but some of them quite corny) visualize or elaborate the micro-level electric or quantum events “happening” around these computations. It makes for a slick production that high school and college students may enjoy, but except in cases where the visualizations are the most effective way to understand a concept (e.g. the encoded photons) it doesn’t add all that much to the overall film. Still, for a brief spin through the world of online cryptography, this documentary keeps its high-level concepts grounded and explained very well for a general, non-scientist audience.
Distributed by Films Media Group, PO Box 2053, Princeton, New Jersey 08543-2053; 800-257-5126Produced by Derek Diorio/Electric SkyDirected by Chris Mullington2009, DVD, color, 52 min. This video attempts to provide a complete and popular (i.e. non-mathematical) survey of quantum physics from Schrödinger to the present day including quantum computation, wave/particle duality, entanglement, superposition, the EPR Paradox, Schrödinger’s Cat, the double slit experiment, and the “noisy observer effect”, all in 52 minutes. And that is precisely the problem. As the DVD case notes state, these topics “flash by like mile markers on this high-speed journey to the realm of quantum teleportation, quantum cryptography, and quantum computing.” Unfortunately, the mile markers are flashing by too quickly for anyone not already familiar with these advanced and often puzzling principles and will be oversimplified for anyone who is conversant with quantum theories. Hence, it is difficult to establish an audience for this video. There is a dizzying array of 18 quantum scientists narrating the video, making it difficult to concentrate on what they are saying, especially since most of them seem intent on speaking as fast as possible. The first three quarters of the video uses rapid cuts and dazzling graphics to the point that it seemed more like a music video than an instructional one. This reviewer is sympathetic to attempts to appeal to student culture, but the extremely fast cuts were unwatchable and incomprehensible at times. A great deal of effort was spent in developing some truly clever illustrations of these principles, using both live action and animation. If each mini-segment could have been slowed down to half its speed and expanded to provide a more thorough explanation, then each segment on its own could have been excellent. Just from the credits at the end of the video, a large production team clearly spent a lot of time making the video. Ironically, the best segment of the entire video is at the very end where it slows down significantly and focuses on quantum computing and its possible applications that could transform our science and our society. Instructors interested in a good, simple introduction to quantum computing might want to preview this last portion to see if it would be suitable for their needs. Public performance rights are included.
In classical physics, the width, or uncertainty, in a set of experimental results is generally attributable to experimental variations, due to small differences in the objects being tested, or variations in the apparatus used, instrumental factors, environmental factors etc. Experiments in quantum physics also suffer from all these sorts of variations. Consequently, even if we have a collection of systems, all carefully prepared in the same eigenstate of the physical variable in question, we will not always get exactly the same measured value. The spread of this distribution is down to experimental uncertainty. People have not been afraid of drawing philosophical conclusions from the uncertainty principle, almost from the moment the result was first published. Heisenberg himself launched one of the earliest sallies, his target being the principle of causality. Causality, the notion that everything that happens has been caused by something happening previously, has been central to physics for hundreds of years.
Distributed by Films Media Group, PO Box 2053, Princeton, New Jersey 08543-2053; 800-257-5126Produced by Films for the Humanities and SciencesDirector n/a2006, DVD, color, 59 min. Scientific theories often are developed through sharing and debate. The Copenhagen Interpretation: Quantum Physics vs. Relativity, brings this process of introduction and improvement to life. The film is well-organized and well-executed. It begins with an engaging summary and then circles back to cover who the key players were, what they believed, and why it matters now. Primary sources such as voice recordings, newspaper clippings and direct quotes ("Let them believe in their tranquilizing religion; an inner voice tells me that it's not yet the real thing," says Albert Einstein) lend the content a sense of immediacy, and the scientists who provide context speak with clarity, precision and passion. The strength of this film lies in its ability to convey the richness of the process through which science advances. Viewers who watch from start to finish will be drawn in by the vigorous discussion inspired by Bohr's theory of quantum mechanics. His ideas were disputed by some of his peers, and their arguments helped him understand where clarification was needed. The film is not suited to segmented viewing in the classroom. Because it is not divided into chapters, instructors who wish to illustrate a point with a video clip will have to fast-forward and scan. In addition, it occasionally fails to provide a simple explanation for its science. For example, animated graphics clearly demonstrate Bohr's supposition that the act of measuring one particle affects the state of another particle--but the voice accompanying the graphics does not explain why this would happen. The Copenhagen Interpretation is recommended for students in senior high and college because it will give them a glimpse of the process of scientific development. It is so engaging that it may even inspire them to participate in the process themselves.