Contents
The modern world has largely become what it is now, thanks to Einstein. We tell how an eccentric C student changed our lives and proved that grades in school are far from the main thing
Everyone seems to know Albert Einstein today. His photograph with his tongue sticking out by Arthur Sass has become an element of modern pop culture, and quotes have scattered throughout the public on social networks. But few people know what an outstanding scientist really was: kind, curious and very resourceful. Despite low grades, difficulties in life and poor financial situation, Einstein forever changed the foundations of theoretical physics and gained worldwide fame.
How Einstein Became an Inventor
Albert Einstein was born in 1879 into an ordinary Jewish family: his father was not very successful in business, and his mother was a housewife. The boy did not fit into the German education system, he often hovered in the clouds and was distracted a lot. And when a family friend introduced Einstein to a physics textbook, his academic performance deteriorated completely. It got to the point where he couldn’t get his high school diploma because he failed his exams in French, chemistry and biology.
Despite a bad start to his academic career, Einstein still graduated from high school thanks to incredible results in physics and mathematics and entered the university. However, difficulties awaited the scientist there too: he studied his favorite subjects on his own, separately from the university program, which is why he missed lectures and earned not the best reputation among teachers. In 1902, after graduating from the university, the future Nobel laureate found himself in a very difficult life situation. He did not have good recommendations from teachers, he could not find a decent job and therefore earned a penny with private lessons. The scientist’s personal life also did not work out: his parents did not give their blessing for marriage with his beloved Mileva Marik because of her Serbian origin.
But then Einstein’s friend’s father helped the scientist get a job at the Patent Office in Bern. Albert quickly coped with routine tasks and in his free time he thought a lot about the question that had tormented him since childhood: what would happen if you ran next to a ray of light? The scientist came to the conclusion that no matter how fast a person runs, the speed of light will remain unchanged. This contradicted the postulates of physics generally accepted at that time, formulated by Galileo, according to which any laws of nature are the same with respect to stationary and bodies moving at a constant speed. Einstein suggested that light does not obey these laws, since it consists of particles that have no mass, which means that the Newtonian equation does not work for them.
How did Einstein become famous?
As early as 1905, Albert Einstein published four papers that changed theoretical physics forever. In them, he first described the quantum theory of light, laid the foundations of the theory of relativity and proved the existence of atoms.
In the same year, the formula for the equivalence of mass and energy E=mc was presented to the scientific community2explaining how the sun and other stars produce energy.
Initially, Einstein’s work was not noticed, but after a short time they made a splash. The scientist was invited to conferences, he traveled a lot around the world, explaining the general theory of relativity, which he rightfully considered the crown of his creation.
The constant traveling and busy schedule of Albert Einstein ruined the scientist’s marriage, and he started an affair with his cousin, who later became his second wife. However, personal problems did not prevent Einstein from immersing himself in his theory. From 1905 to 1914, the scientist worked on the most important flaw in the theory of relativity: neither gravity nor the acceleration of gravity were included in the equation. 10 years of work were crowned with success, and Albert Einstein was able to prove that Newton’s laws and Euclidean geometry do not work if space and time are curved.
In 1921, Einstein received the Nobel Prize for explaining the photoelectric effect – the scientist proved that light consists of photons. However, at the award ceremony, the physicist did not talk about this discovery. Contrary to the expectations of the participants, Einstein read out a report on the theory of relativity, which caused bewilderment of the public.
How Einstein ended up in professional isolation
With the coming to power of the Nazis in the 30s of the XX century, it became unsafe for a scientist to be in Germany. The state sought to refute his scientific achievements and threatened him because of his Jewish origin, so the physicist moved to the United States, where he remained to live until his death. The dark streak in the life of a genius did not end there: his son was diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed in a psychiatric clinic, where he spent the rest of his life. In addition, the scientist learned that his discoveries were being used to develop the atomic bomb, the project of which he did not support from the very beginning, being a staunch pacifist.
In 1936, Einstein’s wife, Elsa, dies, and the US government is actively moving towards the creation of nuclear weapons. Despite the fact that, in fact, it was Albert Einstein who laid the theoretical foundations of physics necessary to create such a weapon, he was not invited to the bomb-building team. He openly supported socialist ideas hostile to the American government. Already at the end of the war, after the sad news about the nuclear attack on Japan, Einstein actively advocated the regulation of the use of nuclear weapons.
The scientist spent the last years of his life in professional isolation. The scientific community was absorbed in quantum theory, and the theory of relativity faded into the background. Albert Einstein could not leave his brainchild. Moreover, scientists have mastered the idea of a physical theory that combines all the already existing knowledge of physics and is able to explain the functioning of the universe. At that time, science was not ready to accept such innovative ideas, and interest in the scientist gradually faded.
Albert Einstein died in 1955 in a hospital from an aortic aneurysm, having spoken a few words to a German nurse before he died. However, the last words of the great scientist remained unknown: the nurse did not know German and could not understand the meaning of what was said.
Einstein’s great discoveries
Special theory of relativity
The special theory of relativity was discovered by Einstein in 1905. It was built on two main principles:
- The principle of relativity, which says that regardless of whether objects move uniformly or are at rest, the physical processes in them will proceed in the same way. For example, if you drop a pen on a moving bus or stand at a bus stop, it will still fall.
- The principle of constancy of the speed of light: the speed of light never changes and does not depend on the light source or its power. That is, the light from the fire and the light from the headlights will have the same speed.
From these two principles, Einstein deduced that time is not a constant but depends on how fast an object is moving. So, the closer an object moves to the speed of light, the slower time will pass for it. And if the object moves at the speed of light, then it will fall into the future.
Moreover, for an object moving at the speed of light, space is distorted. It itself will not change relative to itself, but for observers from the outside it will become shorter in the direction of movement.
Finally, the faster an object moves, the greater its mass will be. This is reflected in the famous equation E = mc2, which means that the mass is proportional to the energy of the object. That is, part of the object’s energy is spent on increasing its mass, and the second part is spent on increasing its speed. It follows from this that it is impossible to travel at the speed of light: the faster the aircraft moves, the higher its mass will be and the more energy will be needed to maintain its speed.
General theory of relativity
The general theory of relativity was formulated in 1915 and, unlike the special theory of relativity, considers objects that do not move in a straight line and are constantly accelerating.
During his research, Einstein noticed that the mass of an object can distort space and time. That is, the higher the mass of a moving object, the more it will distort space and time around it.
This can be explained with a simple example: if a bowling ball is dropped into even sand, a hole is formed. Lighter balls (for example, for ping-pong), rolling past a large ball, will change their trajectory of movement, because the sand around the large ball is distorted. That is why the planets revolve around the Sun: the mass of the sun is so great that it distorts the space around, as if “falling” into it, so other planets change their trajectory of motion and revolve around the Sun.
Bose-Einstein Condensate
To be more precise, Einstein did not discover the condensate itself, but only predicted its appearance back in 1925. This aggregate state of matter could only be obtained in 1995. Einstein studied Brownian motion (or thermal motion) a lot – the chaotic movement of atoms due to heat. However, when a substance is in a state of condensate, the atoms in it do not move randomly, but in concert, as if forming a single wave.
photoelectric effect
Einstein worked a lot with light radiation, studying its nature. He tried to prove that light consists of particles – photons. To do this, he used light radiation of different frequencies and observed its interaction with the metal. He found that depending on the color of the radiation (which is also called the frequency), free electrons are either knocked out of the metal or not. This means that only certain frequencies of light have the ability to knock out electrons and it does not depend on the intensity of light as a whole. Accordingly, the energy of a photon depends on its frequency and affects whether it can knock out an electron or not. This proves that light is not only a wave, but also a stream of particles.
By following this link to the Javalab site, you can conduct your own experiment proving the photoelectric effect.
Success Lessons from Albert Einstein
1. Violence is the enemy of progress
Einstein was a staunch pacifist all his life. He believed that any violence is destructive, and it is impossible to achieve progress with its help. But at the same time, the scientist called himself a “militant” pacifist and was of the opinion that peace must also be fought for, just by other methods. Albert Einstein believed that if all people refused to go to war, then the very concept of war would disappear.
2. Don’t focus on the future
The physicist believed that you need to focus on the present and not fill your head with thoughts about the future. The future will come anyway, Einstein believed, but what we can do in the present matters.
3. Appearance is not the main thing
Einstein was known for his disregard for his appearance. In the last years of his life, he almost constantly wore his favorite sweater, which became popular thanks to photographs of the scientist that flew around the world. The genius was convinced that the appearance of a person is just a wrapper, and the most important thing is hidden inside.
4. The easy way isn’t always the best way.
There are practically no easy ways in science, Einstein believed. To achieve high results, it is important to dive into the most difficult problems and not be afraid to solve them – and not “drill holes in the thinnest part of the board.”
5. The education system is imperfect
Einstein knew firsthand the difficulties of getting an education. Teachers underestimated his knowledge, and unnecessary subjects only distracted the genius from his beloved physics and mathematics. The scientist believed that the education system teaches to think according to a pattern, dulls the imagination and only interferes with learning.
6. Teaching is light
A person stops learning new things only when he ceases to exist. Einstein believed that human stupidity has no limits, unlike genius, and therefore it is so important to be interested in new things and learn all your life. If people stop thinking, then they stop developing, the scientist argued.