Explaining Grover's Quantum Algorithm to College Students

Wentworth Institute of Technology is a baccalaureate degree granting institution and in recent years we have also developed several Master's programs. Our department offers several degrees leading to a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Computer Networking, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, and Data Science. All our programs are designed to be hands-on and expose students to a wide skill set. All our majors need to take several security-related courses. One of the latest security related courses we developed is in Quantum Computing with a focus on security. Quantum Computing is a groundbreaking technology that exploits the laws and properties of quantum mechanics. It can dramatically speed up computations of certain problems and surpass the computation power of modern supercomputers. One notable quantum algorithm we cover in our newly developed course is Grover's algorithm. It is used to search an unstructured database while providing quadratic speedup, compared to its classical counterpart. While demonstrating Grover's algorithm in the classroom, the students raise many questions and explaining all the details of the algorithm is challenging. In this paper, we explain and illustrate the theoretical and implementational challenges and provide examples and solutions.