Alessandro Marcomini organizes an outreach activity for high school students.

On March 14th, Doctoral Candidate Alessandro Marcomini, 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 of course 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, Alessandro Marcomini took care of presenting different experiments, 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.