Albert Einstein as One of the Most Celebrated Brains of Our Time - Essay Example

Albert Einstein Jonathan L Stewart April 20, Albert Einstein is one of the most celebrated brains of our time. He wrote on quite a number of fields ranging from science to philosophy. He was born in Germany in 1879 a place by the name Wurttemberg.Thefamily moved to Italy and later to Switzerland where he studied. After graduating he failed to land himself a teaching post in a technical institute in Swiss yet he was a registered Swiss citizen but only managed to be a technical assistant at Swiss patent office. He became professor later on and while in Germany he changed his citizenship in 1914 but later on renounced it for political reasons. It seems Albert Einstein never found what he was really looking for or the comfort environment looking at how he keep changing his citizenship from time to time. He lived at several countries at his youthful age and he could have actually learned a lot due to different experiences in different countries. He later became United Statescitizen where he was professor of theoretical physics at Princeton and retired from the same post in 1945.Einstein main aim was to simplify and unify the laws of physics by generalizing the theory of gravitation. His first encounter with science was at age of four. His father showed him a pocket compass and he was cautious and astonished by the fact that whichever direction you hold it the arrow always pointed north. This was the beginning of his interest in science and problem solving. His parents valued education more than religion because of the fact that they challenged the Jews religion and took the child to a catholic school due to the standard of the school. His parents were not practicing Jews. His interest in science was huge and that saw him ditching school at the age of 10 that emphasized on Greek and Latin over mathematics and science. His relative helped him with a book in science and his unle too assisted him with algebra book and a math puzzle to solve after he had opted for personal study outside the school because his school couldn’t offer what he wanted. Accordingly Einstein also made a huge contribution in mathematics and he was introduced to it at a very young age. It is in his childhood that he first heard about mathematics. He was ushered into world of mathematics at age of 10. It is max Talmud a family friend that introduced him to philosophy texts. He began to understand deductive reasoning at that tender age mainly through Euclid. He later on start investigating calculus. Einstein contributed to mathematics in a rather different way. In his first theory of relativity there was nothing much distinct from mathematics. It could be seen as a very good standard mathematics because he starts his derivatives wit postulates. This is just a mathematical term for something you start with but didn’t prove it. This was understood by few mathematicians but it had to wait until Minkowski time t reformulate the theory in a justified mathematical way. Einstein himself praised minkowski that he had transformed physics to a four dimensional world. This transformation is very essential and equals a theme of modern physics, where equation becomes the most valued thing and not a personal ability to visualize the thing you are studying. All advancement that came in the 20th century came from men who were willing to trust equation and not their intuition. Einstein started this trend. Another matter was the theory of relativity. Einstein knew that he would have to understand a very difficult form of mathematics called tensor analysis if he had to express it. It took him almost ten years to do that. He made huge contribution to calculus and geometry. He contributed many equations in this field of calculus and geometry; they are called Einstein’s field equations. One of this equation sis on how stress energy causes curvature of space time and is usually written in tensor form. The equation is Gab=KTab where, Gab is the Einstein Tensor. Tab is the stress energy tensor. K is a constant. In Einstein condensation it appears orderly with different rates. If reviewed with examples of ideal bose gas of three different types in different geometry, there is discrete number of quantum states each having macroscopic occupation another type has condensation into a continuous band of states, with each state having macroscopic occupation; in Type III each state is microscopically occupied while the entire condensate band is macroscopically occupied. geometries and other external potentials are then considered: the channel potential, which displays Type II, the cigar trap, and the Casimir prism, the latter two having Type III condensations. In a thermodynamic limit in which the ratio of the dimensions of the anisotropic harmonic trap is kept fixed, T merges with the upper transition, which then becomes a normal BEC. Einstein could work some very advanced mathematics but he was not outstanding in that area. Where his genius came into play was with his ability to see the details in observations that others just took for granted. He was a highly creative and visual kind of person. He could carry out complex thought experiments in his head, called gedankenexperiments Einstein first became famous in 1919 due to his gravitational deflection theory being confirmed by a team of astronomers led by British astronomer. This was his entry point into scientific community. His entry was however objected by many. In the 20th century, Einstein came up with the famous theory of general relativity. He calculated and found that the deflection as per his theory would give value that is two times the Newton’s value. In demonstrating this he chooses image that is five thousand times smaller than the sun. His calculation didn’t want to be much imagination but with some sense of reality and tangible objects. And it is true that imagination is even better tan knowledge that is according to Einstein. According to the law of relativity if a ray of ligt styrikes an object which is five thousand times smalle than the size of the sun it will bent inward such that if viewed from the other side of the object the direction of the ray changes from the original by an angle beta which is proportional in size to distance d which is distance between the centre of gravity of the object and the ray in its closest distance to the centre. The deflection angle is largest when the light rays pass closest to the mass Over the next decades there were repeated measurements of eclipse by astronomers and they were able to further on the accuracy of the first measurements.This gave only a 10 % confirmation of the general relativity.The real deal came in 1967 which was a great breakthrough with the discovery thatconcurrent measurements with a set of radio telescopes was applicable in measuring light deflection with greater certainty. Einstein once took interest in aviation and wants to design a wing of different shape that could help flying better and efficient. His specification was a wing with a large mid-chord arch. He starts by asking the question “where does the lift that allows birds and aero planes to fly”but couldn’t find the answer. In his work there was no major link with Bernoulli’s principal could be the reason for the failure. It seems he wanted to pursue different idea from Wright brother’s tunnel data. Bernoulli’s Theorem developed by eighteenth century scientist found out that as the velocity of a fluid i.e. air increases, its pressure decreases.When it comes to the airplanes the principal is that the wing is shaped so that when it flies the air that is flowing above it moves faster to cover longer distance than that belowthat is covering a shorter distance.The difference in pressure between the upper and lower surfaces of the wing will apply upward pressure on the planes wing. The hump on the top of the wing surface, as per Einstein, will lengthen the distance to be covered by the air at the top of the wing further leading to an additional lift. The reason for the flop in the Einstein move to improve aircraft efficiency is due to the Bernoulli explanation of lift that he relied upon which was incorrect when applied to airplane wings even though it still can be found in popular literature. Einstein also contributed to quantum theory of physics. He talked of photons basing his explanations on the photo electric effect and he then came up with specific heat quantum theory. To him it was only an essential useful structure but it later proved to be a key contribution to the field of quantum theory. Einstein hope was to come up with a unifying theory that will explain everything in the universe by just simple equation. He hoped that by totally studying quantization of energy and charge it could therefore be the result of it. He didn’t find in quantum theory his greatest wish of simplifying the universe into simple theory that can be interpreted. Einsteins famous equation E=mc² is everywhere including t-shirts and even on baseball caps. This equation opened the door for different technological advances especially in nuclear power and medicine. The equation tells us that matter and energy are one. If we know how to go about it then we can convert one to the other or the other way round. This equation is breakthrough though dangerous to human existence. By his equaton of relativity it has been proved that matter can be converted to energy and vice versa and with very small matter a lot of energy can be generayed. what happen in Japan in the second world war the bombing of Hiroshima and nakasaki was as a result of bomb made out of Einstein equation e=mc2.this theory made him regret later because of the damage that was caused by the nuclear bomb droped in jaban and publicly regretted it. The knowledge generated should be directed towards improving humanity and not used to threaten its existence.Einstein was a gentle and sociable kind of follow and well liked and respected in his community. In fact, children in the neighborhood would sometimes drop by Einsteins home and ask if he would show them how to do their arithmetic homework. He always did. References MamoneCapria, M. (2005). Physics Before and After Einstein. Amsterdam, NLD: IOS Press. p 1 Einstein, A., A & E Home Video (Firm), & New Video Group. (2005). Albert Einstein. United States: A & E Home Video. Einstein, A. (1961). Relativity: The special and the general theory; a popular exposition. New York: Crown Publishers. Einstein, A., Dukas, H., & Hoffmann, B. (1979). Albert Einstein, the human side: New glimpses from his archives. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Einstein, A., & Hawking, S. (2007). A stubbornly persistent illusion: The essential scientific writings of Albert Einstein. Philadelphia, Pa: Running Press. Einstein, A., Beck, A., &Havas, P. (1987). The collected papers of Albert Einstein. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Einstein, A. (2010). Works of Albert Einstein. Boston: MobileReference.com. Delano, M. F. (2005). Genius: A photobiography of Albert Einstein. Washington, D.C: National Geographic Society Einstein, A., &Stachel, J. J. (1987). The collected papers of Albert Einstein. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press In Newman, J. R. (1956). The world of mathematics: A small library of the literature of mathematics from Aʻh-mosé the scribe to Albert Einstein. New York: Simon and Schuster. Dank, M. (1983). Albert Einstein. New York: Watts. Read More