ANU Quantum Science Open Day Experience

Last year in November, I happened to see an email in my school inbox promoting the ANU Quantum Science Open Day event. It looked like a lot of fun, with various tours available, including one of the school’s Heavy Ion Accelerator. Although I didn’t understand much about it, it sounded very impressive—something I might never get to see again in my lifetime. So, I signed up without hesitation!

Although I signed up early, many activities were already fully booked. However, when I arrived for the event, I found that some people didn’t show up, and they weren’t strictly checking for reserved tickets. This allowed me to participate in every tour available.

I took many photos and saw a lot of interesting things, so I decided to write a blog post to document my experience. However, since I only thought of writing this blog today, quite some time has passed since the event, and I’ve forgotten some details.

I would just describe the event in the order I took the photos. Note: Although all photos have been compressed, I intentionally preserved the EXIF information.

At first I went to see the making of liquid nitrogen ice cream, and I even got to eat some. Liquid nitrogen ice cream is made by mixing ingredients like cream, milk, and sugar, while pouring in liquid nitrogen and stirring. Because liquid nitrogen is extremely cold, the water in the mixture freezes rapidly into tiny ice crystals, resulting in a very smooth texture. That’s what the poster said, but to me, it tasted pretty similar to regular ice cream.

I learnt that liquid nitrogen is very cheap, costing about 1 to 2 AUD per liter. I knew that most of the air is nitrogen, but I didn’t expect the separation and liquefaction process to be so low-cost.

Then came the magical chocolate. This chocolate bar has a holographic surface that reflects colorful light.

I read the poster next to it, which explained that cocoa butter in chocolate has six polymorphs with different melting points. By heating, melting, cooling, and reheating the chocolate, one can achieve the most desirable Form V crystal structure, which provides the best texture.

Then the holographic chocolate bar itself was explained. It turns out that in order to create the holographic effect on the chocolate surface, a special mold—a plastic film with microscopic periodic structures—was used during the manufacturing process. This is based on the principle of diffraction grating. When white light hits this plastic film, different wavelengths of light are diffracted in different directions, creating a colorful reflective effect. The Form V chocolate can replicate these microscopic structures from the plastic film very well, resulting in the colorful reflection.

Next, I visited the Heavy Ion Accelerator. If I remember correctly, there were three of them. I’ve forgotten the specific details of the introduction, so please refer to the pictures. I only recall that one of the computer screens displayed a terminal that looked like a Linux system, and the code appeared to be written in Python.

Then I visited a quantum computing laboratory of a certain company, if I remember correctly.

After touring around, I took a photo of the main hall. The entire day was filled with various tours; although there were lectures, I didn’t attend any of them.

I also visited some other laboratories, involving lasers and such. I don’t quite remember what they were for, but they were all related to quantum mechanics.