This is your Final Exam. Your exam is due by 11:59 pm on Thur May 8. Late submissions are allowed but will be assessed a penalty as described in Late Work on syllabus. No submission will be accepted after Fri May 9 11:59 pm.

The exam is based primarily on a Shortcut Through Time (ScTT), although one question asks you to connect The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (TALB), The Soul of a New Machine (TSNM), and ScTT.  You may consult TALB, TSNM, ScTT, and other printed or online resources, but please do not discuss the exam with other human beings. The only exception to this is that you may consult with the UMD Writer's Workshop to help in preparing your exam. Your answers must be expressed in your own words so please continue to follow our No Use of AI Writing Tools policy (as described in our syllabus and reproduced below).

Please prepare your exam answers in the same way you have been preparing your personal essays - compose all four of your answers entirely in a single Google Doc  and then submit a single URL when the exam is finished. Make sure that you have the Doc set so that anyone with the link is an editor. Your version history must show the complete evolution of all your answers from start to finish, so please do not start your answers somewhere else and then cut and paste them.

If you have questions about the exam, please ask in class or post those to this thread on the discussion list on Canvas so that everyone gets the same information about the exam. Please allow up to 12 hours for a response to questions on the discussion list.

There are four exam questions, each of which asks for a Personal Essay as a response. This means each response should be a minimum of 500 words and you should not provide an introductory paragraph or summarizing conclusion. Also make sure to follow our other guidelines for Personal Essays. 

Please make sure to number your responses in your Google Doc. You do not need to copy the question into your response although you can if you find that helpful. Do not of course include the questions in any word counts.

1. [5 points] You are talking with a friend who is a Computer Science major who has taken CS 1 and CS 2, so they know some basics of computing but don't know anything about Quantum Computing or Physics. Your friend knows you are an expert in Quantum Computing and says with excitement "It's really amazing how a Quantum Computer can solve problems by trying all the different solutions in parallel and then the answer just pops out!!" You sigh to yourself. You like your friend. You realize you need to correct this misconception. You decide to do this by writing a Personal Essay. First, explain why a Quantum Computer can't simply solve a problem by trying all solutions in parallel. Then, explain how a Quantum Computer would actually solve a problem. Use an example as a part of your explanation. Provide chapter and page numbers from ScTT to support any facts or ideas you rely on. 

2. [5 points] Please find and listen to a podcast about Quantum Computing. You must select an episdoe of a podcast from this list of Quantum Podcasts. There are no restrictions on what podcast episode you select except that it must be at least 20 minutes in length. In your Personal Essay please indicate who was on the podcast and what the topic of discussion was. What were the most interesting facts or ideas from the podcast? How does what you heard on the podcast connect to ScTT? Please provide chapter and page numbers from ScTT to make these connections. Would you recommend this podcast to others interested in Quantum Computing? Why or why not? After your essay please provide the URL to your selected podcast episode.

3. [5 points] As you may know ScTT was published in 2003. There have been many advances in Quantum Computing since that time. Pick three challenges for Quantum Computing that are described in ScTT and do some research to find out about progress in addressing each of those challenges. In this Personal Essay describe each challenge and its status when ScTT was published, and then compare that to present day. What has changed, and how? Please indicate the chapters and page numbers from ScTT where your challenges are described, and then after your essay provide links that show where you found your updated information.

4. [5 points] This Personal Essay asks you to reflect on the entire semester. Each of our books (TALB, TSNM, and ScTT) describe the challenges of building stable and functioning computer hardware at (very) different moments in history. For each era, what is a unique challenge that was faced that did not occur in the other eras? What is one challenge that was shared by all the eras? All of the challenges you discuss should be critical and stand in the way of achieving a working computer. Describe the unique challenge for each era and how it was overcome in that era (or how the attempt was made). Describe the one shared challenge across the eras and the different attempts made to overcome it in each era (succesful or not). Your challenges for Quantum Computing should be different than those discussed in Question 3. Provide chapter and page numbers from our books to show where these different challenges were discussed.

No Use of AI Writing Tools

Please do not use automated writing tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, CoPilot, DeepSeek, etc. at any point in developing work for this class. This includes our Personal Essays and any take home Exams. Do not use them for brainstorming ideas, do not use them for writing, and do not use them for polishing or correcting your work. 

All of your written work should be composed entirely in Google Docs. You may use the spelling and grammar checking tools provided in the standard version of Google Docs but do not use or add-on anything beyond that for any of our assignments.  

Why such a strict policy? I read all of your essays and exams. I do not offload the grading of your work on to a teaching assistant or an automated AI tool. I read what you submit carefully, and I would like to hear your own unique voice come through in the work you do for this class. I genuinely enjoy this experience. These tools obscure your voice and restrict your imagination. They make you sound more generic and less like the unique individual that you are.

Any work that you submit in this class must be uniquely and exclusively written by you. This means no AI Writing Tools, it also means no cutting and pasting or overly close paraphrasing from other sources (which is essentially what these AI tools do, just in a very fancy and elaborate way). If you submit work that you did not uniquely and exclusively create, you may receive a 0 on that assignment.