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Quantum mechanics in five minutes

A few years ago I was set the challenge of explaining quantum physics to the then BBC broadcast journalist Robert Peston in 5 minutes.

In practice, of course, this is a pretty much an impossible task, but the idea was to give a quick taster - which I hope it does. 

I've written quite a bit on quantum physics, if it's something you'd like to dig into a bit deeper:

  • The God Effect - exploring quantum theory's most mind-boggling concept, entanglement with implications from teleportation to unbreakable encryption
  • Cracking Quantum Physics - an illustrated beginner's guide to the quantum world
  • The Quantum Age - focuses on the applications of quantum physics that have transformed our world
  • Quantum Computing - how computers making use of explicit quantum effects have the potential to run algorithms that perform in ways impossible to duplicate with conventional devices.
Here's that video:

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