The VQCC visits
the Colegio Maristas.

On March 14th, Alessandro Marcomini, together with colleagues Álvaro Magdalena and Xoel Sixto, took part in an educational activity for students of the high school “Colegio Maristas – El Pilar” in Vigo, Spain. Over 50 students attended an introductory talk on the fundamental concepts of light and quantum mechanics, from the every-day experience until the state-of-the-art applications in quantum technologies, including quantum-safe internet and quantum cryptography. During the presentation, the QSI Science Art contest has also been promoted, and it has been discussed a possible inter-disciplinary project involving both the Science and the Arts courses of the school.

Then, a practical experience took place, where students could be involved in first person in experimental activities, taking measurements and operating themselves the very same equipment of real laboratories. In detail, each member of the VQCC took care of presenting a different experiment, focusing on showing the interference of light, the way to encode and distribute optical signals and a fully operating optical circuit. The feedback from the students has been extremely positive, with many insightful questions and great enthusiasm, specially given the unusual hands-on approach.

We are very grateful for the welcome from the Maristas School of Vigo. We enjoyed it very much!