Introducing single quantum bits – qubits and superposition of qubits

In Chapter 1, Essential Mathematics and Algorithmic Thinking, in the Vectors section, you learned about the mathematical representations of qubits and we observed that vectors make the computations to be performed onto these qubits a lot easier. In this chapter, you are going to dive deeper into the notion of qubits, not only from a mathematical perspective, and gain a deep understanding of them. This will help you in the next chapter when you program qubits. The qubit is the most fundamental unit of quantum computation and information and can be thought of as the quantum equivalent of a classical bit, which is binary in nature. Classical bits can only be in the states of 0 or 1, which represent the two voltage levels on and off respectively. This means that classical bits can be only present in either of these two states – 0 or 1 – at any one time. However, qubits can be in a state that is neither...