Popular Q Camp materials shared online for school students

Q Camp 2021 happened online. Students were invited to mingle with each other and the camp instructors on conference platform Gather Town (pictured).

In June, CQT hosted a virtual version of its annual outreach camp for Singapore school students, after COVID-19 made events on the university campus impossible. The camp was fully subscribed, with almost 40 students from 11 different schools participating in the week-long series of talks, tutorials and activities.

To open access to more students and learners in other countries, a big chunk of camp materials has now been posted online. Links to the camp lecture notes and recordings of many talks are available via qcamp.quantumlah.org. The talks are also available in a Q Camp playlist on the Centre for Quantum Technologies YouTube channel. The materials are designed for pre-university students in their final years of school, aged around 16 to 19.

Q Camp is mainly organised and taught by the Centre’s PhD students. Angelina Frank, the chair of the organising committee in 2021, says “Q Camp is a wonderful opportunity for us to convey core concepts of quantum mechanics to a curious and diverse audience in an authentic and supportive space. It is a rewarding learning experience on all levels!”

One new feature of Q Camp in 2021 was small-group discussions of scientific articles, similar to academia’s Journal Clubs. The camp also included tutorial sessions on mathematics and quantum mechanics, a cryptography treasure hunt, live-streamed lab tours, and talks giving perspectives on careers in the field.

In a post-camp survey of participants, all respondents said they would recommend their teachers to send students for Q Camp again and all rated the experience as excellent or good. The online camp used a conference platform called Gather Town to give students a place to mingle and Zoom to deliver lectures.

Giving feedback in the survey, one student wrote: “I believe that although the camp experience has inevitably been compromised due to the lack of chance of real physical interaction, this is one of the best experience I can ask for under special conditions. Will encourage my juniors to attend future versions of this camp!”

Another said: “Despite the camp being held over Zoom, it was extremely engaging and interesting. Over the last five days, I have learnt a lot of new things which have allowed me to become more interested in this realm of physics.”

CQT may one day welcome back some of the students to do research. One participant wrote: “I certainly felt my quantum knowledge has been strengthened and improved and I feel more inspired to contribute to the quantum frontiers :)”

Students following the online materials at their own pace may contact qcamp@quantumlah.org with any questions or to register interest for future runs of Q Camp.