1. The Path to the Quantum Computer By George Johnson Adam Meyer December 8 th, 2008 CS 110

2.  The form of the machine matters, not the substance it is made of.  A computer made of transistors, microchips, and vacuum tubes will work just as well as one made of pulleys, strings, and wooden wheels.  A computer does not even need to be electrical  A computer was built from Tinkertoys at MIT that could play tic-tac-toe.

3.  The whole idea behind a quantum computer is that instead of a machine dealing with 1s and 0s there is a machine that can have 1s, 0s, and 1s and 0s existing at the same time.  One quantum switch can be in two positions  Two quantum switches can be in four positions  Three quantum switches can be in eight states  4: 16. 5:32. 6:64. So on and so forth  So by the time the 13 atom rolls around it is roughly equal to 2^13 calculations.

4.  Think of atoms like tops  They can spin clockwise  They can spin counterclockwise  They can spin both at the same time  Using this they can simulate 1s and 0s and therefore be used in computing

5.  With Shor’s Algorithm quantum computers can break down extremely large numbers into their primes, which is how some internet security is provided.  All encrypted information is stored as primes of large numbers so if a computer was able to break these down quickly all encrypted information would be compromised.

6.  Using the same theory as before, quantum computing can be used to encrypt some information just as well as quantum computing can be used to decode older information.