Albert Einstein and the frontiers of physics

193 Pages·1996·0.537 MB·English

by  Jeremy Bernstein

Albert Einstein:
And the Frontiers of Physics
Jeremy Bernstein
Oxford University Press
Albert Einstein
And the Frontiers of Physics
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Owen Gingerich
General Editor
Albert Einstein
And the Frontiers of Physics
Jeremy Bernstein
Oxford University Press
New York • Oxford
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 1996 by Jeremy Bernstein
First published in 1996 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback in 1997
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of Oxford University Press.
Design: Design Oasis
Layout: Leonard Levitsky
Picture research: Lisa Kirchner
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bernstein, Jeremy
Albert Einstein
p. cm. — (Oxford portraits in science)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-509275-9 (library edition)
ISBN 0-19-512029-9 (paperback)
1. Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955—Biography—Juvenile literature.
2. Physicists—Biography—Juvenile literature.
[1. Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955. 2. Physicists.]
I. Title. II. Series.
QC16.E5B44 1996
530’.092—dc20 95-37500
CIP
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Frontispiece:Einstein in 1932 at the California Institute of Technology.
Contents
Preface. How I Did Not Get to Meet Albert Einstein . . . .8
Chapter 1. Einstein When Young . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Sidebar: Einstein’s Proof of the
Pythagorean Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Chapter 2. The Miracle Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Sidebar: A Short History of Light Theory . . . . . .49
Chapter 3. The Strange Story of the Quantum . . . . . . . . . .67
Sidebar: How Cavity, or Blackbody, Radiation
Became a Pivotal Point in Physics . . . . . . . . . . . .80
Sidebar: Light Quanta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85
Chapter 4. Professor Einstein’s Happiest Thought . . . . . . . .88
Sidebar: What Makes a Geometry
Euclidean? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100
Chapter 5. Einstein’s Cosmology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117
Chapter 6. The Stranger Story of the Quantum . . . . . . . .126
Sidebar: How to Detect Crank Physics . . . . . . .135
Chapter 7. 112 Mercer Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145
Chapter 8. Einstein’s Legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168
Coda How I Did Get to See Einstein . . . . . . . . . . . . .173
Appendix The Michelson-Morley Experiment . . . . . . . . . .174
Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .183
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .185
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .187
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PREFACE
How I Did Not
Get to Meet
Albert Einstein
Many people who write biographies of famous people are
at pains to tell the reader about how they met and spent
time with their subject. In the best case this gives the reader
a feeling of personal intimacy with the individual whose life
is being described; in the worst case the reader may get the
feeling that the book is really nothing but simpleminded
hero-worshipping. Since I did not get to meet Albert
Einstein I do not fall into either category. However, I
thought by telling you how I did not get to meet Einstein I
could introduce both myself and Einstein.
In 1947 I entered Harvard University as a freshman. I
was 17 and had no intention of studying science. However,
like many people I had heard of Einstein and his theory of
relativity. Somehow I had learned that according to Einstein
moving clocks slow down and that massive objects become
more massive when observed in motion; indeed, that when
such objects approach the speed of light they become so
massive that they can no longer be accelerated at all. I had
also read somewhere that space is “curved” and that there is
8
How I Did Not Get to Meet Albert Einstein
a “fourth dimension,” without having the slightest idea of
what any of these terms meant. But to me the most inter-
esting thing that I had read was that only seven people in
the world understood the theory of relativity. This was very
mysterious to me, and I became fascinated by the question
of how so few people could understand something.
At the time I had a very limited view of what under-
standing something meant. In high school I had studied
French and Spanish. Understanding Spanish meant translat-
ing it into English—which one could do, if necessary, with
the help of a dictionary. We also studied poetry.
Understanding poetry meant translating it into prose, which
we also did, sometimes with the help of a dictionary. We also
were taught to understand some mathematics. This meant
being able to prove theorems and to manipulate symbols.
Sometimes it meant memorizing the proofs of theorems.
This may not have been “understanding” in the best sense of
the term, but at least one could pass examinations.
From this limited experience it seemed to me that one
could understand anything if only one took the time and
effort and used the right “dictionaries.” When one said
then that only seven people in the world understood
Einstein’s theory of relativity, did that mean that only seven
people were willing to put in the time and effort and that
everyone else was too lazy, or did it mean something else? I
was very intrigued by this question and, while still in high
school, I began to acquire a crazy ambition. Though I did
not want to become a scientist, the thought occurred to me
that I might become the eighth person in the world to
understand the theory of relativity—a challenge sort of like
climbing Mount Everest. But how to go about it?
There was no one in my high school to guide me, so I
forgot about relativity until I got to college. Fortunately for
me, when I arrived at Harvard a new program was in place
for teaching science to nonscientists. No longer did a non-
scientist have to take a year’s worth of one of the sciences,
9