To accompany ‘A new frontier awaits — computing with light’  

SCIENCE

Before Reading:

1. Describe what role electricity plays in a computer’s function to the best of your understanding. To what extent might some other form of energy replace electricity’s role in future computers? Explain your answer.
2. Describe how your vision would change if you put on a pair of sunglasses. Consider what you already know about light, particularly at the fundamental level. To the best of your knowledge, explain how the sunglasses’ lenses cause the vision change you have described.

During Reading:

1. Describe how blocking the LED light in Hitesh Ballani’s innovative computer changes the computer’s output.
2. Are “1 or 0” signals associated more closely with an analog or digital computer? Explain your answer in one sentence.
3. How might the new computers described in this story help contribute to a more eco-friendly future?
4. What limitation experienced by a digital computer’s central processing unit, or CPU, when running calculations is overcome by some specialized electronic chips, such as graphics processing units?
5. One crucial material component of some diffractive optical processors is glass. Describe the structure of the glass in these processors.
6. Based on what you’ve read in this story, come up with a definition for machine learning.
7. Describe the role of a modulator in Microsoft’s new analog optical computer.
8. If one of Ballani’s new computer chips consists of 2 million pixels, how many multiplications can this chip carry out simultaneously?
9. Contrast the role of a transistor in controlling electrical flow within a computer versus the role of a diode.
10.  How might the new diode developed by Jennifer Dionne and her team contribute to optical computing technology?

After Reading:

1. This story illustrates how math can be used as a toolbox to describe and communicate scientific principles. Imagine shining a light through two lenses, first a clear lens, then a blacked-out lens. If we multiply the light’s intensity by 1, does this better describe the light intensity after passing through the clear lens or the blacked-out one? If we apply this formula to a shaded lens that blocks half the incoming light, what number should we use to replace the 1? Briefly explain your answer.
2. How might the new optical processor help improve the drug manufacturing process? If implemented, what is one specific way this improvement could help people? Come up with one other potential application of this new computer technology. Explain how the strengths of this kind of computer processing might help people of the future.