ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Toffoli gate

Okay kiddo, let me explain the Toffoli Gate like you're five years old. Just like we have doors in our house that let us go from one room to another, the Toffoli Gate is like a special door that lets us do special things with numbers in computers.

When we use computers, we use something called "Binary" to represent numbers. Binary is a number system that only uses two digits, 0 and 1. These digits are like switches that can be either off (0) or on (1).

Now, the Toffoli Gate is a special type of switch that lets us change the value of one of these switches based on the values of the other two switches. It works like this: if we have two switches (let's call them "A" and "B") and we want to change the value of a third switch (let's call it "C"), we can use the Toffoli Gate.

First, we check the values of A and B. If A is off (0) and B is also off (0), we don't do anything - the value of C stays the same. But if A and B are both on (1), then we switch the value of C. So if C was off (0), it becomes on (1), and if C was on (1), it becomes off (0).

That's basically what the Toffoli Gate does - it lets us take two inputs (A and B) and change the value of a third input (C) based on those two inputs. And we can do this over and over again, using lots and lots of Toffoli Gates, to do all sorts of cool things with numbers in computers.

Of course, this is a very simplified explanation - there's a lot more to the Toffoli Gate and how it works. But hopefully, this gives you a basic idea of what it is and what it does.