can somebody explain please?

Hi, I'm a 13 year old Belgian student curious of how quantum computing works and how different qubits are to bits, I'm not trying to sound smart or anything but I'm just curious of how it works, I've tried to do research but it's all too complicated for me. can somebody explain it to me less overwhelmingly please? To really grasp most of quantum computation, you're going to need a foundation in linear algebra. Once you understand the basics of that, it'll be a lot easier to understand quantum computing. Without that, it's a bit difficult to describe in any detail. The suuuper handwavy explanation is to contrast a quantum computer with a digital computer: In a digital computer, a bit is represented with current in a circuit either being "on" or "off." We can modify and combine these "on" and "off" values together with "digital logic gates," like AND, OR, XOR, NAND, etc., and then create "circuits" that can do computations. In a quantum computer, we aren't dealing with "on" and "off" values, but rather with "quantum states" that can "superpose" on each other --- you can think of this as similar to how a sound wave can be made up of many frequencies superposed on top of each other, or how light can have multiple frequencies. And, further, we can perform certain physical processes to these quantum states to modify and combine them, and we call these processes "quantum gates." We model the behavior of these gates mathematically with something called matrix multiplication (I don't know when that gets introduced to students). We can arrange the gates in combinations called "quantum circuits," which let us do computation. There is sort of an analogous idea to "on" and "off" for quantum states; we refer to these states as |0> and |1>. However, a big difference is that --- while a digital computer can only have its circuits in a state of on or off, with nothing in between --- a quantum computer can just as easily have 0.707|0> + 0.707|1> be a valid state. That is, a combination of |0> and |1> at the same time. Our hope is that this additional expressiveness means that quantum computers can solve certain problems more efficiently than digital computers, but we don't have proof that this is necessarily the case yet. We do have proof of that, like Shor's for factoring. And... Quantum computers still measure qubits as classical 0s and 1s. Practically speaking, we know of course that Shor's algorithm is faster than any of the classical algorithms that we know of. But we don't technically know that factoring doesn't also have a polynomial time classical algorithm. This is a fun introduction and has been tried with high school students. My favourite explanation is But what is quantum computing? by Grant Sanderson (also known as 3Blue1Brown) You can visualize a qubit as a vector extending from the origin to the surface of a unit sphere, known as the Bloch sphere. While a classical bit is strictly 0 or 1, a qubit can exist as any point on this sphere's surface prior to measurement. The computational advantage of quantum systems lies in their ability to manipulate these vectors through quantum gates without collapsing their state. By performing calculations in this "unmeasured" state, algorithms can rotate the vector to align closely with either the |0⟩ or |1⟩ basis states. The closer the vector is to a specific pole at the time of measurement, the higher the probability of collapsing the qubit into that corresponding state. Your explanation is not wrong, but relatively few 13-year-olds even know what a vector is. The real answer is: no, at 13, one probably does not have the educational foundation to understand even the basics of quantum (or classical) computing. A university class in linear algebra is kind of the bottom-level requirement. I would advise OP to keep studying the foundations of math, physics, and computer science for five or six more years. In computers we often think of 0 and 1 being in opposite directions like on a light switch. But in quantum mechanics they're more like north and east on a compass. You get a whole circle of directions, like north by northwest.  Those directions are "superpositions" of north and east (south is negative north and west is negative east). In fact, polarized light carries one qubit of information.  Polarized light comes off at a certain angle and then when it hits polarized sunglasses the amount that gets through is cos2 (theta). When you have n bits, there are 2n possible states.  When you have n qubits there are 2n orthogonal directions, and a state is some superposition of them. When you measure them, the probability of the result you get depends on the square of the costume of the angle between the state and the measuring device. Quantum computers basically take advantage of quantum mechanics and translates that behavior into digital info. Which obviously requires learning both quantum mechanics and computer science (including algebra).There are several materials that can yield the qubits, but the qubit itself is an abstract unit. It can’t store data beyond milliseconds yet, so quantum computing is focused on processing (QPUs). Quantum gates and quantum algorithms process the qubit, usually into bits.A LOT of research use qubits, but that’s only because virtually all computers use bits. Assuming a very stable environment and very good sensors, the material can yield ANY radix (a “qudit”).Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, please. I’m making a technical report on making instruction set architecture (ISAs) for mixed qudits. The other answers are pretty good. But here is a different perspective for your understanding. The entire basis of computation is that there are different ways to mathematically model a system/problem, and math has a speed. Digital computing does math using transistors to perform Boolean algebra. It is fast for some types of calculations slow for others. For example, it is very fast for addition and logical comparison, but slower for matrix multiplication. But if you change the architecture of the chip, you can make it faster for matrix multiplication but you will make it slow for logical comparison. Quantum mechanics has the concept of entanglement and superposition. Which is very slow to calculate using digital computing. But why not use a system put into superposition or be entangled to do the math? It will make it very quick to do a calculation that involves SP and entanglementb like maths, but slow for basic math like addition and multiplication. But what if you can convert a problem in a way that can be solved with that type of math? Your quantum system can solve it faster than a digital one can. Hence Shor's algorithm. It converted a factorization problem into a period finding one which makes it easier to solve with the mathematics of quantum systems. There should be careers in the Navy for this type of stuff. Create your account and connect with a world of communities.