Einstein. By only stating one word, a last name, so much is already drawn into people’s memories. Not just for his appearance, but certainly for his amazing formulas and discoveries is Albert Einstein the most well known person in the physics community.
Like many others, I have a certain picture of Einstein in my head. He is unkempt and a little absent-minded looking. From his hair to his dress, he appears to be some sort of mad scientist. Aside from how he looked, I only knew that he came up with the formula E=mc2 but I could not tell you what that meant until this course. Seeing as this is one of the most groundbreaking discoveries in physics, I must admit that it’s extremely sad that I couldn’t tell you the variable c stood for the speed of light. Despite my lack of knowledge about Einstein’s immense contributions to physics, I do find it rather funny that while he was seen as crazy in his time he is seen as a genius in ours.
After doing the history reading, Einstein became much more to me than the “absent-minded professor” that hung around Princeton, NJ. Einstein actually proved to be a very complicated and controversial figure. His theories threw away what much of classical physics had been resting on, such as Newton’s laws of the universe. Because of this, Einstein encountered much opposition during his time. When going through the articles that related Johannes Stark and the “Aryan Physics” movement, I did not quite understand why this select group of German scientists alienated the theories brought forth by Albert Einstein and other Jewish scientists. It seemed like Stark was on a power-trip and wanted to estrange anyone who stood in disagreement to what he believed. While some of the reasons for these actions can be related to politics and ego, I’m sure that differences in theory were contributing factors as well. Stark and his followers seemed to be very traditional in their views of science and what it should accomplish. Einstein posed a great problem. His theory of relativity was so far off from what was previously known.
After learning about Einstein’s postulates, I understand why Stark might not have thought that Einstein’s theories were “real” or “pure” science. When first looking at these theories I thought they were far-fetched and made absolutely no sense. They surely go against all reason and intuition. First of all, it seems like he just made up postulates with no evidence for them. How can you base an entire theory on postulates that might not be correct? Who is to say that they are other than the person who makes them up? What concepts shocked me even more were length contraction and time dilations. How can a ruler get shorter if it is moving? Shouldn’t length always be the same unless another variable is making it smaller? Einstein said it could change! Objects moving with respect to an observer get smaller in his theory of length contraction. Time dilation freaks me out even more, being a phenomenon where time slows down if you are moving. The Twin Paradox demonstrates this idea, saying that a twin who went into outer space came back, having an age of 25 while his brother who stayed on Earth was 40. The time in outer space moved slower because the boy was traveling in a constantly moving spaceship. That is scary to think! Who needs plastic surgery when you can go into outer space, huh? Thankfully like Quantum Mechanics that applies to small particles, the concepts of Einstein’s theories only apply to objects moving close to the speed of light.
Einstein’s “mad scientist” image certainly fits his ideas!
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