The spinorial ball
Half-integer spin is generally introduced in quantum physics lectures as an object that does not come back to its original state after one full turn but that does after two. Due to this context, it is often thought and considered as a purely quantum behavior. However, half-integer spin is more than anything a geometrical feature of the rotation groups. With collaborators, we have developped the spinorial ball to provide a macroscopic visualization of those concepts. It consists in a ball made of LED panel that display the complex components of a spinor under the action of rotations. Once you get used to the colomap, you can vizualise in your hands all the features of a quantum 2-level system: Bloch sphere, Hopf bundle, Berry phase... and of course, it only comes back to its initial state after two turns!
You can also check out this short abstract video that explains how the spinorial ball works in less than 2 minutes :
Publications :
- The spinorial ball : a macroscopic object of spin-1/2
- The spinorial ball (II): A manipulable qubit at human scale
- If you want to build your own ball, all the needed informations are on Github