Wednesday, November 17, 2010

19.1-19.2, due on November 19

1. Maybe I kind of just freaked out as soon as I read the word quantum. One thing I don't understand is how we know that photons will pass through certain polarized films around 1/2 of the time. I know quantum mechanics is heavily based on probability, but I didn't understand the book's explanation of this. I also don't really get the vectors involved.

2. Wow, I never would have related quantum theory to cryptography. It's amazing that the relationship exists, but I don't understand why we would need to use the quantum key distribution over something like the Diffie-Helman key exchange. Doesn't the fact that eavesdropping causes communication errors make this method not incredibly valuable?

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