The teaching of quantum physics is challenging, not the least because teachers must overcome the traditional narrative approach, students must gain a conceptual understanding of fundamentals, and citizens must become aware of quantum technologies. Quantum games are powerful tools to overcome obstacles and push one’s limits without fear of failure. We report on a pilot study involving twenty high-school student volunteers, consisting of a compact intervention module on the concepts of quantum states, properties, measurement, superposition, and entanglement within the framework of the Model of Educational Reconstruction, followed by playing a game, quantum TiqTaqToe. The outcomes of this research-based learning environment are discussed via the qualitative analysis of students’ answers to two open questionnaires. We find that students grasped the concepts of superposition and, with special awareness, entanglement, the game proving effective to help students experience their implications in quantum behavior. The informal and stimulating tournament atmosphere favored intertwining of the game with learning goals. Our central message is that the use of quantum game tools fits a teaching/learning environment in manners often not well understood in the literature; it enhances awareness of the nature of new and non-intuitive concepts, increases complementarity with other languages within the process of thinking about physics, boosts student engagement, and improves intervention efficiency and effectiveness.

We draw a picture of physical systems that allows us to recognize what “time” is by requiring consistency with the way that time enters the fundamental laws of Physics. Elements of the picture are two non-interacting and yet entangled quantum systems, one of which acting as a clock. The setting is based on the Page and Wootters mechanism, with tools from large-N quantum approaches. Starting from an overall quantum description, we first take the classical limit of the clock only, and then of the clock and the evolving system altogether; we thus derive the Schrödinger equation in the first case, and the Hamilton equations of motion in the second. This work shows that there is not a “quantum time”, possibly opposed to a “classical” one; there is only one time, and it is a manifestation of entanglement.

Educating K12 students and general public in quantum physics represents an evitable must no longer since quantum technologies are going to revolutionize our lives. Quantum literacy is a formidable challenge and an extraordinary opportunity for a massive cultural uplift, where citizens learn how to engender creativity and practice a new way of thinking, essential for smart community building. Scientific thinking hinges on analyzing facts and creating understanding, and it is then formulated with the dense mathematical language for later fact checking. Within classical physics, learners’ intuition may in principle be educated via classroom demonstrations of everyday-life phenomena. Their understanding can even be framed with the mathematics suited to their instruction degree. For quantum physics, on the contrary, we have no experience of quantum phenomena and the required mathematics is beyond non-expert reach. Therefore, educating intuition needs imagination. Without rooting to experiments and some degree of formal framing, educators face the risk to provide only evanescent tales, often misled, while resorting to familiar analogies. Here, we report on the realization of QPlayLearn, an online platform conceived to explicitly address challenges and opportunities of massive quantum literacy. QPlayLearn’s mission is to provide multilevel education on quantum science and technologies to anyone, regardless of age and background. To this aim, innovative interactive tools enhance the learning process effectiveness, fun, and accessibility, while remaining grounded on scientific correctness. Examples are games for basic quantum physics teaching, on-purpose designed animations, and easy-to-understand explanations on terminology and concepts by global experts. As a strategy for massive cultural change, QPlayLearn offers diversified content for different target groups, from primary school all the way to university physics students. It is addressed also to companies wishing to understand the potential of the emergent quantum industry, journalists, and policymakers needing to seize what quantum technologies are about, as well as all quantum science enthusiasts.

In this article, we reflect on the functions of outreach in developing the modern scientific mind, and discuss its essential importance in the modern society of rapid technological development. We embed our approach to outreach in culturo-scientific thinking. This is constituted by embracing disciplinary thinking (in particular creativity) whilst appreciating the epistemology of science as an evolving dialogue of ideas, with numerous alternative perspectives and uncertain futures to be managed. Structuring scientific knowledge as an assemblage of interacting and evolving discipline-cultures, we conceive of a culturo-scientific storytelling to bring about positive transformations for the public in these thinking skills and ground our approach in quantum science and technologies (QST). This field has the potential to generate significant changes for the life of every citizen, and so a skills-oriented approach to its education, both formal and non-formal, is essential. Finally, we present examples of such storytelling in the case of QST, the classification and evaluation of which correspond to future work in which this narrative approach is studied in action.

We study the dynamics of a bipartite quantum system in a way such that its formal description keeps holding even if one of its parts becomes macroscopic; the problem is related to the analysis of the quantum-to-classical crossover, but our approach implies that the whole system stays genuinely quantum. The aim of the work is to understand (1) if, (2) to what extent, and possibly (3) how the evolution of a macroscopic environment testifies to the coupling with its microscopic quantum companion. To this purpose we consider a magnetic environment made of a large number of spin-12 particles, coupled with a quantum mechanical oscillator, possibly in the presence of an external magnetic field. We take the value of the total environmental spin S constant and large, which allows us to consider the environment as one single macroscopic system, and further deal with the hurdles of the spin-algebra via approximations that are valid in the large-S limit. We find an insightful expression for the propagator of the whole system, where we identify an effective “back-action” term, i.e., an operator acting on the magnetic environment only, and yet missing in the absence of the quantum principal system. This operator emerges as a time-dependent magnetic anisotropy whose character, whether uniaxial or planar, also depends on the detuning between the frequency of the oscillator and the level splitting in the spectrum of the free magnetic system, induced by the possible presence of the external field. The time dependence of the anisotropy is analyzed, and its effects on the dynamics of the magnet, as well as its relation to the entangling evolution of the overall system, are discussed.

Introduction: Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is a pleiotropic cytokine produced by several immunologic cells during inflammatory processes, showing an increased serum value in several autoimmune diseases and infections. Recently, it has been used to evaluate lung involvement in COVID-19 infection, and a specific laboratory test has been developed for such a purpose. We used IL-6 to monitor the evolution of Stevens Johnson Syndrome/Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis in two patients. Case Summary: We observed two cases of generalized allopurinol-induced adverse cutaneous reactions, including severe hypersensitivity. Serum IL-6 measurement allowed us to evaluate the magnitude of the immune and inflammatory status of patients better than C Reactive Protein (CRP) or White Blood Cell (WBC) count and to evaluate the response to the treatment. Conclusion: Although different cytokines and serum markers have been proposed for the diagnosis of severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCAR) like SJS/TEN, they are still experimental. We were the first to use IL-6 measurement as a helpful biomarker in the diagnosis and therapeutic management.