Test Your Quantum Knowledge with These Jeopardy Clues From Caltech’s Spiros Michalakis

The Jeopardy! category celebrates World Quantum Day this Friday, April 14.

By Andrew Moseman

Spiros Michalakis has all the answers—on Jeopardy!, at least.

Michalakis, a mathematical physicist and manager of outreach for Caltech’s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM), appeared on Monday’s episode of the quiz show to read the five clues for the “Quantum Science” category. His appearance celebrates the upcoming World Quantum Day, which will be observed on Friday, April 14, 2023.

Here are the answers Michalakis presented on Jeopardy!. Think you know the questions? Check the bottom of the post for the answers.

1. As a consultant working with Marvel, I coined this term for a world of things so tiny that Ant-Man has to shrink way down to enter it; Dr. Strange pays a visit too.

2. World Quantum Day is April 14th because Planck's constant, which is in constant use, rounds to 4.14 x 10^{-15} eV s, short for electron this unit; it takes about 625 quintillion eV per second to light a 100-watt bulb.

3. In 2022, the White House announcement of the first World Quantum Day set up contributions like these super-accurate timekeepers, found on every GPS satellite.

4. In computing, either 1 or 0, on or off, can be represented by this unit, with "Q-U" for quantum before it, and it can be in both states at once, allowing more simultaneous operations.

5. Classical mechanics says that all physical quantities can be known at the same time; this principle, from Werner Heisenberg, sets quantum science apart by saying that the more sure you are of a particle's position, the less sure you are of its momentum.

Caltech magazine covered Michalakis’s work with Paul Rudd on the Ant-Man movies in 2015, and the Institute has created a number of resources to celebrate World Quantum Day, including IQIM’s Quantum Realm page. At the Caltech Science Exchange, you can learn about quantum physics, quantum computing, the uncertainty principle as well as how quantum phenomena are already at use in technology all around us.

Here are the correct responses to the Jeopardy! clues:

1. The Quantum Realm

2. Volt

3. Atomic clocks

4. A bit

5. The uncertainty principle