Albert Einstein
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 - April 18, 1955) was a physicist. He received the Nobel Prize in 1921 for Physics.
Einstein is famous for his theories about light, matter, gravity, space, and time, which helps scientists to understand these things much better than they had before. His theories are called the theory of special relativity and the theory of general relativity. His most famous equation is E = mc2. It means that energy and mass are different forms of the same thing, and that the amount of energy in a piece of mass is the same as the amount of the mass multiplied by the speed of light times itself (a very big number).
Contents |
[change] His life
Einstein was born at Ulm in Württemberg, Germany on March 14, 1879. He was a very fat baby, with an unusually large head. His family was Jewish but was not very religious. Albert also didn't talk until he was about three, which is very unusual. When Albert was around four, his father gave him a magnetic compass. He was very interested in trying to understand how an invisible force could make the needle move and became interested in studying science and mathematics. This compass inspired him to explore the world. Albert went to a Roman Catholic school. He was not a good student, and many people thought him to be not very smart.
When he became older, he went to a school in Switzerland. After he graduated, he got a job in the patent office there. While he was working there, he wrote the papers that made him famous as a great scientist.Einstein had two heavily-disabled children with his first wife Mileva. Liesel suffered from Down syndrom and was brought to her Serbian grandparents. She has been never heard of again. Eduard Einstein was diagnosed with a severe mental illness spending decades in hospitals.
Einstein's brain was found severely unusual for a genius. Geniuses' brains are around 1500 to 1600 cm³. There is an indirect connection between brain size and the size of the neopallium especially important for the brain's higher functions. However ,Einstein's brain weight was under-average and showed further signs of degeneration (e.g.Sylvian fissure).
In 1917, Einstein became very sick with an illness that almost killed him. His cousin Elsa Lowenthal then nursed him back to health. After this, Einstein divorced Mileva, and married Elsa on June 2, 1919.
Just before the start of World War I, he moved back to Germany, and became director of a school there. He lived in Berlin until the Nazi government came to power. The Nazis hated people who were Jewish or who came from Jewish families. They accused Einstein of helping to create "Jewish physics," and German physicists tried to prove that his theories were wrong. Einstein moved to the United States to Princeton, New Jersey after feeling the heat of Nazi Germany and in 1940 he became a United States citizen.
During World War II, Einstein wrote to the U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, to say that the United States should invent an atomic bomb before the Nazi government could invent one first. He was also part of the Manhattan project, which was the project to create the atomic bomb.
Einstein died on April 18, 1955 of heart disease. He was still writing about quantum physics hours before he died.
[change] The Special Theory of Relativity
The Special Theory of Relativity was published by Einstein in 1905 on a paper called "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". It states that both space and time are altered near the speed of light. This means that as you get closer to the speed of 186,000 miles per second, distances appear to stretch, and clocks tick more slowly. Einstein propsed that Special Relativity is based on two ideas. The first is that the laws of physics are the same for all observers in an inertial state of motion, meaning that all observers move in different directions without acceleration. The second idea is that the constancy of the speed of light in a vacuum is always the same. A vacuum is a space without matter. The Special Theory of Relativity also states that every peson has their own time, meaning that one person's clock says something different than another person's clock. The reason for this is time dilation, which can be understood better by the twin paradox. The twin paradox also shows how time has changed because of speed and mass. The faster something moves, or the more mass that it has, makes time go slower for them. You can demonstrate this with a pair of twins. Suppose that Joe and Moe are identical twins. On their twentienth birthday, Joe goes into space in a rocket going close to the speed of light. He stays in the rocket for a while, and then comes back to Earth where Moe is waiting for him. They will discover that Moe is a lot older than Joe because Joe was traveling near the speed of light, and therefore, time goes by much slower for him, due to relativistic time dilation. So, time dilation is the effect that a stationary clock runs slower than a moving clock. Special Relativity also relates energy with mass, in Albert Einstein's E=mc2 formula.
[change] E=mc2
E=mc2 is one of the things that Einstein is most famous for. It is a famous equation in physics and math that relates mass to energy. The "E" in the equation stands for energy. Energy is a number in which you give to objects depending on how much they change. It is a number given to all physical objects to describe how much potential the object has in order to change. There are three basic forms of energy: Potential Energy, Kinectic Energy, and Rest Energy. When energy moves from one form to another, the amount of energy always remains the same. It can't be made or destroyed. This rule is called the "conservation law of energy". For example, when you throw a ball, the energy is transferrred from your hand to the ball as you release it. But the energy that was in your hand, and now the energy that is in the ball is the same number. The "M" in the equation stands for mass. Mass is the amount of matter you have in your body. A lot of people think mass and weight is the same thing, but it isn't. An object always has the same amount of mass, even if you were to go to the moon, while the weight of an object changes if you go to the moon. But the mass can change as it gets closer to the speed of light. The object becomes bigger. But mass and weight are also similar in some ways. Because a boulder weighs more than a pebble, it has more energy in it, and therefore has more mass. The c2 in the equation stands for the speed of light squared. To square something means to multiply it by itself, so if you were to square the speed of light, it would be 186,000 miles per second, times 186,000 miles per second. Einstein's equation, E=mc2, implies that an object with mass has energy in its mass, and objects with more mass have more energy. An example of this is a photon. A light photon has no mass, but its energy can act as its mass when it hits something. The equation also says that an object with mass can't go faster than the speed of light.
[change] The General Theory of Relativity
The General Theory of Relativity was published in 1915, ten years after the Special Theory of Relativity was created. According to the General Theory of Relativity, the gravitational attraction between masses results in the masses in space and time, meaning that every object is attracted to each other, and that results in space and time. Einstein's General Relativity also explained spacetime. Spacetime is the fact that we have a four dimensional universe, having three spatial(space) dimensions, and one temporal(time) dimension. All physical objects-us, the moon, the sun, the Milky Way, everything, is located inside these three dimensions. Also, mass changes the shape of spacetime to change, making the force of gravity curved. These curves are called gravitational waves, and all moving things follow these curves. Black holes are a major source of gravitational waves. A black hole is an object in the universe that has such a strong pull of gravity, that not even light can escape it. They are formed when giant stars, at least three times the size of our sun, dies. This is called a supernova. Also, general relativity explains gravitational lensing, which is where gravity bends when a massive object comes near it. This was proven during a solar eclipse, when the sun moved behind the moon, and made gravity bend. General Relativity also set the stage for the theory of the formation of our universe. This theory is called the Big Bang. General Relativity explained singularities, which is what scientists think the universe formed from. This singularity was small, dense, and very hot. All of the matter that we know today came out of this point 15 billion years ago.
[change] Beliefs
Many scientists only care about their work, but Einstein also spoke and wrote often about politics and world peace. He liked the ideas of socialism and of having only one government for the whole world. He also worked for Zionism, the effort to try to create the new country of Israel.
Einstein's family was Jewish, but Einstein never practiced this religion seriously. He liked the ideas of the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and also thought that Buddhism was a good religion.
Even though Einstein thought of many ideas that helped scientists understand the world much better, he disagreed with many scientific theories that were developed later in his life. Many scientific theories discuss things that we cannot know for certain, but only as probabilities. Einstein didn't like these kinds of theories; he thought that it should be possible to understand anything, if we had the correct theory. He once said, "I do not believe that God plays dice with the Universe."
Because Einstein helped science so much, his name is now used for several different things. A unit used in photochemistry was named for him. It is equal to Avogadro's number multiplied by the energy of one photon of light. The chemical element Einsteinium is named after the scientist as well. In slang, we sometimes call a very smart person an "Einstein."
One of his inspiring sayings is "There are two ways to live your life, one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle."
There is still a strong criticism of Einstein. Ronald William Clark says that Einstein hated Germany and the Germans since his youth. G.O.Mueller wrote a whole encyclopedia refuting Einstein's relativity. G.O.Mueller , Aristotle, Kant, Leibniz say space and time are categories of perception, not distortable "things" , and not joined together.The speed of light could be higher. Paul Dirac and others thought that constants can change over time, too (e.g. gravitation).G.O.Mueller lists about 4000 Einstein-critical works since 1905, rallying worldwide for rethinking relativity.
[change] Einstein Quotes
Albert Einstein said many famous quotes. Some of these are:
1. "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
2. "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
3. "If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."
4. "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
5. "Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty."
6. "Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
7. "An empty stomach is not a good political adviser."
8. "I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."
9. "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."
10. "Dear mother! Today a joyful notice. H. A. Lorentz has telegraphed me that the English expeditions have really proven the deflection of light at the sun."
11. "It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom."
12. "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
13. "Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."
14. "The world is a dangerous place. Not because of those who do terrible things. But because of those who let them do it."
15. "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
16. "The only real valuable thing is intuition."
17. "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."
18. "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
19. "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
20. "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
21. "Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
22. "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
23. "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
24. "Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love"
25. "Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."
26. "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
27. "I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive."
28. "It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer ."
29. "If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber."
30. "The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat."
31. "The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
32. "A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy."
33. "The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."
34. "Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people ."
35. "A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others ."
36. "Only a life lived for others is a life worth while ."
37. "Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within ."
38. "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
39. "Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift."
40. "Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
41. "Strange is our Situation Here Upon Earth"
42. "Perfections of mean and confusion of goals seem -in my opinion- to characterize our age. "
[change] Other websites
- G.O.Mueller[1]
