The conversation starts with quantum entanglement. There are four students and three faculty members gathered around a lunchroom table. More will join later: the systems administrator from the IT department, another math faculty member, a social science student, an art major, an enthusiastic freshman and sophomore. These dining hall discussions are called the science café. The café meets every Thursday from 12:15 to 1:45 to talk about articles and findings which have appeared in The New York Times science section. "It’s a social forum to engage with scientific and mathematic ideas," biology professor Joy Lapseritis explains.

On this day, no one can stop buzzing about the article, "A Leap for Teleporting, Between Ions Feet Apart." In fact, the article will poke in and out of subsequent café get-togethers for weeks. Joy had not read the article, so she asks Alec Schmidt—a senior science student who is working on a prototype of robotic fish analogs as his thesis project—to talk about it. "They are simplifying a gigantic math equation," he says.

"Try and explain it for us," Joy encourages.

"Essentially," Alec explains, "they’re tagging different atoms so they’re distinguishable."

"How?" freshman Emma Ehrilich wonders from the other side of the round table.

"Well, they’re holding them apart and getting them into one of two quantum states," he says. "They are thus both in this dual state but there’s a law that no two things can share the same state." Alec holds up both hands and uses four fingers to demonstrate the "how." He talks using Schrodinger's cats as stand-ins for atoms. He rationalizes. He explains more. And he finally summarizes, "It is information transfer without any wiring or transition through space."

Wendy Shifrin, a dance professor at the College, came to the table wanting to know if there was any follow up to last week’s article about the science behind a dog walk, but is now engrossed by quantum entanglement. She asks, "What is the big deal?"

Alec responds, "It is two cats instead of one; if one is known to be dead, then we know the other is alive without looking at it."

There’s a collective "ah-ha" moment. A natural breaking point. Before moving to the next few articles some students and staff leave, some go for dessert, and new people join. Sophomore Leah Selitsky sits down at the table with her lunch. "I liked the article about math and airport screenings," she says. "Did anyone read that article?" Math professor Bill Dunbar had. He’s interested in what Leah thought of it.