Totally Random: Why Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics

This is a talk about a graphic novel — a comic —  I wrote with my daughter about quantum mechanics, and why someone like Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel prize in 1965 for his contribution to quantum electrodynamics, could say that ‘nobody understands quantum mechanics.’ Totally Random, published last year by Princeton University Press, focuses on entanglement: what it is, why it’s puzzling, and what you can do with it. Schrödinger, who came up with the term, called entanglement 'the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought.' I’ll talk about some of the difficulties writing a science comic, particularly one aimed at explaining entanglement to a general audience, how we deal with entanglement and some foundational questions about quantum mechanics, and how a comic can explain some of the core ideas behind quantum computation and quantum cryptography.