Lilia Bellahcen, Grade 12
UWC Costa Rica
Today progress is part of our everyday lives. Inventions like phones, aircraft engines, satellites and so on became almost trivial. However, they all owe their existence to the discoveries of one man: Albert Einstein. He is certainly the most important and best known physicist of the 20th century, so adulated by scientists and the public that his image alone brings in millions of euros every year. Einstein revolutionized physics and redrew the universe geometry a hundred years ago. He was a man beset by simple questions that made him a genius. But how did he do that? What was the journey of this child who was fascinated by a compass at the age of five?
Given his impressive background since his birth in 1879, I was very curious to know more about his personal life and how physics first got introduced to him in general?
He grew up with an engineer father, owner of an electrochemical plant, and a piano lover mother who gave him his love for music. As a kid he had language deficiencies and he started talking very late so no one really believed in him. He liked being alone, questioning the world’s smallest details.
Albert had a deep aversion to school, however, a simple compass that his father gave him was a mystery for him that he had to solve. Along with the geometry book that his uncle offered him, this compass was the key to open his heart to physics. He saw the world in a concrete way even in the abstract things that constitute physics.
Apart from his complicated relationship with authority and his continued septism and criticism towards everything that surrounded him, his personal life was relatively normal. He dreamt of getting into the Polytechnic School of Zurich, in which he worked after several job rejections. He fell in love with a girl whom he married later on. All he wanted to do was to teach and have time to do his research, and this was the real interesting part.
One day as he was walking, he asked himself what would happen if a man traveled next to a beam of light. The light would be motionless, he wouldn’t see it anymore. But according to Galilee, in the 17s, if the same mechanical experiments were carried out in two reference frames in uniform rectilinear translation with respect to each other, they would give exactly the same results and you wouldn’t be able to tell that the reference frames are moving. However, it is admitted that light is a wave that propagates at a constant speed no matter its direction… This idea sticks in his mind.
He was also questioning himself a lot about the meaning of time until he woke up one day saying the light appeared to him! Simultaneity does not exist, unless the two events happen in the same place.
But if someone sees something at a certain distance and someone else looks at it from farther away, what we think is the same moment is in fact a few hundred millionths of a second different because light takes time to arrive.
Before, we thought that time was absolute.
Now time and space are both relative.
He not only generalized what we call today the special relativity but he is also at the origin of several revolutionary discoveries. The photoelectric effect will be worth the Nobel Prize. He is finally known and respected.
To conclude, I am mostly impressed by his way of thinking and about how he questioned admitted facts to find a better explanation.
Citations:
MLA style: Albert Einstein – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. Fri. 12 Aug 2022. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/biographical/>
Kaku, M. (2022). Albert Einstein. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 12, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein
Image Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
Given his impressive background since his birth in 1879, I was very curious to know more about his personal life and how physics first got introduced to him in general?
He grew up with an engineer father, owner of an electrochemical plant, and a piano lover mother who gave him his love for music. As a kid he had language deficiencies and he started talking very late so no one really believed in him. He liked being alone, questioning the world’s smallest details.
Albert had a deep aversion to school, however, a simple compass that his father gave him was a mystery for him that he had to solve. Along with the geometry book that his uncle offered him, this compass was the key to open his heart to physics. He saw the world in a concrete way even in the abstract things that constitute physics.
Apart from his complicated relationship with authority and his continued septism and criticism towards everything that surrounded him, his personal life was relatively normal. He dreamt of getting into the Polytechnic School of Zurich, in which he worked after several job rejections. He fell in love with a girl whom he married later on. All he wanted to do was to teach and have time to do his research, and this was the real interesting part.
One day as he was walking, he asked himself what would happen if a man traveled next to a beam of light. The light would be motionless, he wouldn’t see it anymore. But according to Galilee, in the 17s, if the same mechanical experiments were carried out in two reference frames in uniform rectilinear translation with respect to each other, they would give exactly the same results and you wouldn’t be able to tell that the reference frames are moving. However, it is admitted that light is a wave that propagates at a constant speed no matter its direction… This idea sticks in his mind.
He was also questioning himself a lot about the meaning of time until he woke up one day saying the light appeared to him! Simultaneity does not exist, unless the two events happen in the same place.
But if someone sees something at a certain distance and someone else looks at it from farther away, what we think is the same moment is in fact a few hundred millionths of a second different because light takes time to arrive.
Before, we thought that time was absolute.
Now time and space are both relative.
He not only generalized what we call today the special relativity but he is also at the origin of several revolutionary discoveries. The photoelectric effect will be worth the Nobel Prize. He is finally known and respected.
To conclude, I am mostly impressed by his way of thinking and about how he questioned admitted facts to find a better explanation.
Citations:
MLA style: Albert Einstein – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. Fri. 12 Aug 2022. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/biographical/>
Kaku, M. (2022). Albert Einstein. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 12, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albert-Einstein
Image Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
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