Understanding superposition

Superposition is something we generally can't see with the naked eye. This is typically the case when discussing the superposition of an electron. Since an electron is very small and there are so many of them, it is hard to distinguish one with even a powerful microscope. There are, however, some analogies in the classical world that we can use to illustrate what superposition is. For example, a spinning coin is what most texts use to describe superposition. While it is spinning, we can say that it is in the state of both heads and tails. It isn't until the coin collapses that we see what the final state of the coin is.

In this chapter, we're going to use this spinning coin analogy just to help you understand the general principle of superposition. However, once we start working on our quantum circuits, you will see some of the differences between superposition and its probabilistic behavior in the classical world versus its behavior in...