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Samples by Patrick McComb

734-757-7355 • pat.mccomb@gmail.com

Excerpts from

Science Reporting

Blog:Diamonds in Quantum Computing 1Raymond Scott 100 3The Legacy of War of the Worlds 6Mathematician Sophie Germain 7Global Sunblock Using Sulfur 9A Response to Paul Davies 10Songs:The Latest Guess of Everything 13How Long is the Coast of Britain? 15Mech and Manabozho 16Information Graphics:Relativistic Baseball 18Chord Head 19US Poverty by State 20Two-Digit Math 21sciencereporting.blogspot.com

Diamonds in Quantum Computing

Quantum particles have the bizarre capacity to contain a variety of differentstates at once. This is calledsuperposition. A quantum particle may be in asuperposition of states but it will break down into one of those states once it isobserved. In fact, it will break down if the particle interacts too much with theexternal environment.This delicate property makes the quantum world appealing tocomputerscientists. By exploiting superposition, many different mathematical valuesmay be explored simultaneously. That would make computers thousands oftimes faster and solve mathematical problems that are too complex forclassical machines. But the difficulty of keeping those quantum bits in causalisolation is a huge technical challenge. Often, it has required cooling materialsclose to absolute zero.

Diamond is now showing promise as a material that can perform quantumcomputing functions at room temperature. "The beauty of diamond is that itbrings all of this physics to a desktop," saysDavid Awschalomof the Universityof California, Santa Barbara.

Science News

posts an article about howdiamonds -- or more precisely, flaws indiamonds -- are showing promise. In a naturaldiamond lattice, flaws are inevitable. Themost common impurity is a nitrogen atom.Another kind of flaw is a vacancy in thelattice where a carbon would otherwise sit.When a diamond crystal contains a nitrogenand a vacancy next to each other, somethingstrange happens. Electrons from the nitrogenwill orbit the vacancy as though an atom isthere.This virtual molecule, called a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center, possessesspin, the quantum form of magnetism.Spins are like microscopic bar magnets and can encode and storeinformation by pointing in different directions. A single unit ofinformation, called a bit, can be, say, a 1 if the spin points up or a 0 if itpoints down....Researchers have so far managed to store and manipulate only ahandful of qubits [quantum bits] in superbly well-controlled systems,such as single ions suspended in an electromagnetic trap orsuperconducting materials cooled to very low temperatures. Ina paperto be published in

Science

, Awschalom and his collaborators describehow they achieved a similar level of control over NV centers in diamond.The October 2007 issue of

Scientific American

had an excellent article on thisresearch [subscription]:Diamond has a track record of extremes, including ultrahardness, higherthermal conductivity than any other solid material and transparency toultraviolet light. In addition, diamond has recently become much moreattractive for solid-state electronics, with the development oftechniques to grow high-purity, single-crystal synthetic diamonds andinsert suitable impurities into them (doping). Pure diamond is anelectrical insulator, but doped, it can become a semiconductor withexceptional properties. It could be used for detecting ultraviolet light,

ultraviolet light-emitting diodes and optics, and high-power microwaveelectronics. But the application that has many researchers excited isquantum spintronics, which could lead to a practical quantumcomputer—capable of feats believed impossible for regular computers—and ultrasecure communication.

Raymond Scott 100

"It's all very well to write screwy music, and imitate things like wooden Indiansand powerhouses, but just writing screwy music isn't enough. If it's screwymusic you want, there's plenty of that in Stravinsky..."

-- Harold Taylor, 1939, from the

Rhythm Magazine

article,You Can KeepRaymond Scott In addition to making some of the most joyouslyintricate and distinctive melodies of the 20thCentury, Raymond Scott was also a leading pioneerin multi-track recording, electronic music andcollaborated with the likes of Robert Moog, JimHenson and Motown. But odds are you will recognizehis tunes from Warner Brothers cartoons. He isarguably one of the most influentialmusician/inventors in American music. Here is hissignature song, "Powerhouse," as performed by thebandRacalmuto.

"The compositions of Raymond Scott are etched, it seems, into the fabric of 20th century culture like some strand of DNA sequence coding our collectivememory for future-mutations."

-- Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. Dj SpookyRaymond's six-piece band was called the "Raymond Scott Quintette."(Apparently, Raymond thought the word "sextet" would distract from the musicand the Frenchie "ette" lent a touch of class.) While the music was classified asjazz, jazz critics were frequently hostile. Despite the critics, the music provedhighly popular with the buying public.It was not so popular with the band members. Raymond coerced them intoupwards of 60 takes, performing dizzying riffs -- and sometimes under weirdacoustic circumstances in order to achieve a particular sound. Unlike other jazzacts, improvisation was not allowed. The songs are intricately assembled asthough they were designed by an engineer. Band members could not deviatefrom the strict tune structure any more than parts manufacturers could deviatefrom an engine design. Raymond didn't use sheet music either. He recorded theplayers, edited the strips, played them back and asked the players to play there-ordered arrangements from memory.