Google’s new Doodle explains quantum superposition with a kid’s magic trick

When Google’s trying to come up with a theme for its latest Doodle, it’s not like the company is hurting for options. Today for example, April 14, is simultaneously National Pecan Day, National Gardening Day, Cambodian New Year, and a whole lot more. One of today’s celebrations is special for Google in particular because it represents one of the company’s big computational research projects, and in honor of it Google’s got a new animated Doodle.

We’re talking about World Quantum Day, and much like Pi Day last month, this one occurs when it does because of a measurement — in this case, Plank’s constant, which can be expressed as 4.14×10−15 eV·s. That fundamental building block of quantum mechanics gives rise to the systems powering some of Google’s most experimental computers, to say nothing of, you know, existence as we know it.