Relatively Einstein

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Relatively Einstein

His genius reshaped the laws of nature. His theories changed scientists? perception of the Universe. His ideas led to the most destructive and lethal weapon known to man. Albert Einstein hypothesized some of the most complex theories of all time, The Special Theory of Relativity and The General Theory of Relativity.

He was a pudgy first child of a bougesois Jewish couple from Southern Germany. His father was an unsuccessful Engineer and his mother was a talented musician. His mother often encouraged his interests in Bach and Mozart. In his early years he received a toy compass, a gift from his father, that provoked his first "thought experiment." He was curious as to why the needle always pointed North (Golden 21).

When he was fifteen he quit prep school, renounced his German citizenship, and entered the Swiss equivalent of MIT. There he fell in love and married a classmate. The marriage lasted a short three years (Golden 21).

While coping with his loss, he moved in with a divorced cousin by the name of Elsa. She cooked and cleaned for him while he was discovering his, soon to be, theory of General Relativity. Elsa and Albert were wed a short time after (Golden 21).

At the peak of World War I he risked his wife?s life, and his own, and signed an anti-war petition. When the Nazis came to power prior to World War II, he was forced to leave Germany. He moved to Princeton, where they built a physics program around him. A Hungarian scientist warned him of the Germans? attempt to make an atomic bomb. Einstein then wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt and warned him of the Nazi threat. Shortly thereafter, The Manhattan Project (the program which was responsible for the designing, building and testing of the atomic bomb) was organized, in which Einstein had no part in (Hawking 66).

Albert urged for a ban on nuclear weapons after he learned of the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He tried to convince Americans that McCarthyism (false threat of communism reaching North America) was a hoax, and called for an end to racism (Golden 22).

Shortly after graduation Einstein began to ponder about the universe. While living in Germany, he composed his first of two relativity theories; The Special Theory of Relativity (Golden 23). "The Special Theory of Relativity deals with phenomena that becomes noticeabl...

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...ce. This is precisely what Einstein envisioned happening to planets, the moon, and the rest of the cosmos. This is the reason that Earth orbits the sun and the moon revolves around the sun. "He (Einstein) maintained that gravity, as an invisible force that pulls apples and other things to the ground does not exist," states Chaisson (99).

Albert Einstein hypothesized some of the most complex theories of all time, Special and General Relativity. His Genius reshaped the way scientists think and the way we look at the universe. "I still can?t believe he thought of it."?Marcel Grossman (Feynman 49)

Bibliography

1. Bohm, David. The Special Theory of Relativity. Routledge: NY, 1965.

2. Chaisson, Eric. Relatively Speaking. W. W. Norton: NY, 1988.

3. Feynman, Richard P. Six Not-So-Easy Pieces. Addison-Wesley: Reading,1997.

4. Golden, Frederick. "Person of the Century." Time 31 Dec 1999: 21.

5. Gundersen, P. Erik. The Handy Physics Answer Book. Detroit: Visible Ink, 1999.

6. Hawking, Stephen. "A Breif History of Relativity." Time 31 Dec 1999: 66.

7. Laing, David. The Earth System. Fort Kent: Wm. C. Brown, 1991.

8. Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Random House: NY, 1980.

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