30-Second Einstein: The 50 Fundamentals of His Work, Life and Legacy, Each Explained in Half a Minute PDF
Preview 30-Second Einstein: The 50 Fundamentals of His Work, Life and Legacy, Each Explained in Half a Minute
30-SECOND EINSTEIN The 50 fundamentals of his work, life and legacy, each explained in half a minute Editor Brian Clegg Contributors Philip Ball Brian Clegg Leon Clifford Rhodri Evans Andrew May Illustrations Steve Rawlings CONTENTS Introduction Matter GLOSSARY A Convenient Fiction Determining Molecular Dimensions Adventures in Statistical Mechanics Brownian Motion Explained Profile: Satyendra Bose Perrin’s Particles Bose-Einstein Statistics Bose-Einstein Condensates Quantum Adventures GLOSSARY Einstein’s Changing Physics Photoelectric Quanta Millikan Delivers Quantized Vibrations Profile: Max Planck Towards Wave-Particle Duality Stimulated Emission Special Theory of Relativity GLOSSARY From Patents to Relativity Dreaming About Light On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies Farewell to the Ether Profile: Hermann Minkowski Simultaneity Length, Time & Mass Spacetime Einstein & the World GLOSSARY On the Energy & Inertia of Bodies E=MC2 The Chain Profile: Leo Szilárd Making Einstein’s Equation a Reality The Roosevelt Letter A Voice for Peace Einstein’s Patent Fighting the Quantum GLOSSARY Letters to Born Einstein’s Slit Weighing the Photon Hidden Variables Profile: Niels Bohr EPR Entanglement Triumphs Realism & Reality General Theory of Relativity GLOSSARY Breaking Inertial Frames The Happiest Thought Heavy Clocks A Curve in Space & Time Profile: Arthur Eddington Needing a new Mathematics The Hilbert Challenge The Equations Eddington’s Expedition Einstein’s Universe GLOSSARY Black Holes Gravitational Lenses Gravitational Waves The Cosmological Constant Expanding Universes Wormholes Frame Draffing & Time Travel Profile: John Wheeler Unified Field Theories Appendices Resources Notes on Contributors Index Acknowledgements INTRODUCTION Brian Clegg It’s easy to think of Albert Einstein as a lone scientific adventurer, a genius who transformed our understanding of the world. However, to quote historian of science Thony Christie, ‘There are no lone geniuses; science is a collective, collaborative enterprise.’ Certainly Einstein did not work in isolation, but rather built on the work of his predecessors. Yet only Newton can rival Einstein’s personal contribution to physics. Perhaps because Einstein was the first scientist to receive the level of media adulation that he did, there are frequent attempts to belittle his work. Anyone working in science communication receives a steady stream of books and articles attempting to prove Einstein wrong. And, bizarrely, when in 2013 the Observer newspaper published a list of the top ten physicists in history, Einstein was only fourth after Newton, Bohr and Galileo. Yet while it is true that some scientists receive media attention that is totally out of proportion to their contributions, this cannot be said of Albert Einstein. Four Major Papers In one year, when not even an academic, he published four papers that had a huge impact. One, which won him the Nobel Prize, established the mechanism behind the photoelectric effect. That may sound insignificant, but it fired the starting gun for quantum physics. Another established the nature of Brownian motion, in which small particles such as pollen bounce around in water – demonstrating the existence of atoms, which at the time was disputed. A third established the special theory of relativity. And the fourth built on special relativity to establish the equivalence of mass and energy, leading to the world’s most famous equation: E=mc2. All this occurred before Einstein went on to advance quantum physics and to explain gravity with his general theory of relativity. Einstein was never one to go along with the crowd. He hated the regimentation of German schools, and as a teenager renounced his German citizenship. It wasn’t until he was 30 that he got his first academic post. And he remained resolutely a pacifist throughout his life. How This Book Works Each topic is clearly and concisely explained on one page in a punchy single paragraph: the 30-Second Theory. For an even quicker overview, there is the 3- Second Thrash alongside – the key idea caught in a single sentence. Then the 3- Minute Thought expands on this, addressing the consequences of a theory or drawing out a quirky, intriguing aspect of the subject. Each chapter also contains the biography of a key associate of Einstein, a fellow pioneer in the field – such as Minkowski, Bohr and Bose. To get a picture of Einstein’s work we start, in Matter, with his early focus on atoms and the way he used statistics to explain their behaviour. Next comes Quantum Adventures, in which we explore his contribution to the foundations of quantum physics before getting onto his Special Theory of Relativity. This account of the way the fixed speed of light changes the relationship of space and time led him to an understanding of the relationship between matter and energy that lay behind nuclear bombs and nuclear power, which we find in a chapter on the relationship between Einstein & the World – where you’ll find a discussion of his unlikely patent for a fridge! Next we explore in Fighting the Quantum how Einstein challenged his contemporaries, notably Niels Bohr, on the predictions of quantum theory, leading to Einstein unwittingly uncovering the remarkable phenomenon of quantum entanglement. This came after his masterwork, the General Theory of Relativity, which leads us to a transformed understanding of Einstein’s Universe. Aptly, Einstein’s work spans a range from the very small world of atoms and quantum theory to the limits of the cosmos.
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