Speakable and unspeakable – the quantum superposition

from the 19th of April to the 3rd of May
at Manifattura Tabacchi – Spazio Festa
(entrance by via delle Cascine 35)

Free entry 

You can visit the exhibition:

  • from Monday to Wednesday from 4pm to 8pm (guided tour every hour)
  • from Thursday to Saturday, from 4pm to 9pm (guided tour every hour)
  • Available upon reservation for schools:
    From Monday to Friday, from 9am to 1pm

 

Access is restricted in compliance with COVID-19 regulations.

In occasion of the World Quantum Day, the exhibition ‘Speakable and unspekable’ opens its doors in Florence to illustrate quantum mechanics to the general public for the first time.
This initiative takes place within a European and Italian program, with the support of the main Universities and Research Institutes.
In Florence the event is organized by the National Institute of Optics (CNR-INO) with the collaboration of the National Institute of Research and Metrology (INRIM), the European Laboratory of Non-Linear Spectroscopy (LENS) and the company Quantum Telecommunication Italy (QTI).

The exhibition is organized and realized by a team of young researchers in physics, artists and professional graphic designers, who have tried together to tell ‘the unspeakable’, to propose a conversation on phenomena for which our intuition does not help and the laws of classical physics are not enough to understand.
Quantum mechanics is the physics of today and, a bit similarly to contemporary art, is a continuous research. It breaks consolidates rules, tells what can not be seen or said, admits that opposite realities can exist simultaneously, makes possible what would have been otherwise impossible.

‘Speakable and unpeakable’ is shaped around these concepts, with the goal of molding and communicating an intuition on certain quantum phenomena, which normally we do not experience, but are key to the technology we use and to the world as we know it.
Developed along five thematic rooms, the exhibit includes a collection of images, interactive installations, games, experiments to be explored and videos of experiments performed in Italian laboratories of excellence.
A discovery journey is waiting for you, starting from the microscopic world of atoms and molecules, until the most advanced and innovative technologies which, first envisioned and created in the research labs, are now transforming the fields of informatics, communication and sensing, with a huge impact on our everyday life.