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Einstein as a teenager

Albert Einstein, the greatest physicist in the 20th century, was born in Ulm, southwest Germany, on March 1879, and moved to Munich with his family a year later. Einstein's parents were Jews. His father Herman Einstein and his uncle Jacob Einstein jointly opened an electrical appliance factory to produce motors, arc lamps and electrical instruments for power stations and lighting systems. Mother Pauline, a housewife with secondary education, likes music very much and taught Einstein to play the violin when he was six years old.

Einstein was not lively when he was a child, and he couldn't speak when he was over three years old. His parents were worried that he was dumb and took him to see a doctor. Fortunately, Einstein was not dumb, but he didn't speak fluently until he was nine years old. Everything he says must be carefully thought over.

At the age of four or five, Einstein was once ill in bed, and his father gave him a compass. When he found that the compass always pointed in a fixed direction, he was very surprised and felt that there must be something hidden behind this phenomenon. He happily played with the compass for several days, pestering his father and uncle Jacob to ask a series of questions. Although he can't even say the word "magnetic" well, he stubbornly wants to know why the compass can guide the direction. This deep and lasting impression was vividly recalled by Einstein until he was 67 years old.

When Einstein was in primary school and middle school, his homework was normal. Because he is slow and doesn't like people, his teachers and classmates don't like him. The teachers who taught him Greek and Latin hated him even more. He once publicly scolded him: "Einstein, you will never be a successful person when you grow up." And I want to kick him out of school for fear that his class will affect other students.

Einstein's uncle Jacob is in charge of technical affairs in the electric appliance factory, while Einstein's father is in charge of business contact. Jacob is an engineer. He loves mathematics very much. When Einstein came to ask him questions, he always introduced his mathematics knowledge to him in very simple and popular language. Under the influence of his uncle, Einstein was enlightened by science and philosophy earlier.

My father's business is not good, but he is optimistic and kind. Inviting poor students from Munich to dinner at home every night is tantamount to helping them. One of them is a pair of Jewish brothers Max and Bernard from Lithuania. They are all medical students. They like reading books and have a wide range of interests. They were invited to eat at Einstein's house and became good friends with shy little Einstein with black hair and brown eyes.

Max can be said to be Einstein's "first teacher". He lent him some popular natural science books. When Einstein was twelve years old, Max gave him a plane geometry textbook from speke. Einstein recalled this sacred little book in his later years and said, "There are many conclusions in this book, such as that the three heights of a triangle intersect at one point. Although they are not obvious in themselves, they can be reliably proved, so any doubt seems impossible. This clarity and reliability left an indescribable impression on me. "

Einstein was also very lucky to know the main achievements and methods in the field of natural science from an excellent popular reading. Popular reading not only increased Einstein's knowledge, but also touched the curious heartstrings of young people and caused him to think deeply about the problem.

At the age of sixteen, Einstein applied for the engineering department of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, but failed in the entrance examination. He accepted the suggestion of Professor Weber, the president of the Federal Institute of Technology and a famous physicist in the school, and completed the middle school course in Arau, Switzerland, with a view to obtaining a middle school degree.

1896 5438+00 In June, Einstein stepped into the school gate of Zurich University of Technology and studied mathematics and physics in the normal department. He is very disgusted with the indoctrination education in school, which makes people have no time and interest to think about other problems. Fortunately, compulsory education that stifles real scientific motivation is much less in Zurich Federal Institute of Technology than in other universities. Einstein made full use of the free air in the school and devoted himself to the subject he loved. At school, he widely read the works of masters of physics such as Helmholtz and Hertz, and he was most fascinated by Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. He has the ability of self-study, the habit of analyzing problems and the ability of independent thinking.

Einstein's Early Work

1900, Einstein graduated from Zurich University of Technology. He was refused to stay in school because he was not enthusiastic about some courses and indifferent to the teachers. He couldn't find a job and made a living as a tutor and substitute teacher. After a year and a half of unemployment, Marcel Grossman, a classmate who cares about and understands his talent, extended a helping hand to him. Grossman managed to persuade his father to introduce Einstein to the Swiss Patent Office as a technician.

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2 Einstein's life

Einstein thanked Grossman for his lifelong help. In his mourning letter to Grossman, he said that when he graduated from college, he was "suddenly abandoned by everyone and faced with life at a loss." He helped me. Through him and his father, I later went to Haller (then director of the Swiss Patent Office) and entered the patent office. It's kind of like saving my life. Without him, I probably won't starve to death, but my spirit will be depressed. "

1902 February 2 1 day, Einstein obtained Swiss nationality and moved to Bern, waiting for the recruitment of the patent office. 1902 On June 23rd, Einstein was officially employed as a third-class technician by the Patent Office, whose job was to examine all kinds of technological inventions applying for patent rights. 1903 married mileva Malik, a college classmate.

From 1900 to 1904, Einstein wrote a paper every year and published it in the German journal of physics. The first two articles are about the thermodynamics of liquid level and electrolysis, trying to give chemistry a mechanical basis. Later, it was found that this road was not feasible, and the mechanical basis of thermodynamics was studied instead. 190 1 put forward some basic theories of statistical mechanics, and three papers from 1902 to 1904 all belong to this field.

1904 seriously discusses the fluctuation phenomenon predicted by statistical mechanics and finds that energy fluctuation depends on Boltzmann constant. It not only applies this result to mechanical systems and thermal phenomena, but also boldly applies it to radiation phenomena, and obtains the fluctuation formula of radiation energy, thus deducing Wien's displacement law. The study of fluctuation phenomenon made him make a major breakthrough in both radiation theory and molecular motion theory in 1905. Name and profile network. Computer output microfilm

Einstein's miracle 1905

From 65438 to 0905, Einstein created an unprecedented miracle in the history of science. This year, he wrote six papers. During the half year from March to September, he made four epoch-making contributions in three fields in his spare time besides working eight hours a day in the patent office. He published four important papers on quantum theory of light, molecular size measurement, Brownian motion theory and special relativity.

1905 In March, Einstein sent the paper he thought was correct to the editorial department of the German Journal of Physics. He said shyly to the editor, "I will be very happy if you can find room for me to publish this paper in your annual report." This "embarrassing" paper is called "a speculative view on the generation and transformation of light".

In this paper, the quantum concept put forward by Planck in 1900 is extended to the propagation of light in space, and the optical quantum hypothesis is put forward. It is considered that: for time average, light behaves as fluctuation; For instantaneous values, light appears as particles. This is the first time in history to reveal the unity of fluctuation of microscopic objects and particles, that is, wave-particle duality.

At the end of this article, he explained the photoelectric effect with the concept of optical quantum, and deduced the relationship between the maximum energy of photoelectrons and the frequency of incident light. This relationship was not confirmed by Millikan's experiment until 10 years later. 192 1 year, Einstein won the nobel prize in physics for his achievement of "the discovery of the law of photoelectric effect".

But this is really just the beginning. Albert Einstein went hand in hand in the fields of light, heat and electrophysics, and it was out of control. 1905 In April, Einstein completed a new method to determine the molecular size, and in May, he completed the movement of suspended particles in still liquid required by the theory of thermomolecular motion. These are two papers about Brownian motion. Einstein's purpose at that time was to determine the actual size of molecules by observing the irregular motion of suspended particles caused by the fluctuation of molecular motion, thus solving the problem of whether atoms exist in scientific and philosophical circles for more than half a century.

Three years later, French physicist Perrin confirmed Einstein's theoretical prediction with accurate experiments. This justifies the objective existence of atoms and molecules, which also makes ostwald, the German chemist who is most firmly opposed to the founder of atomism and energy theory, take the initiative to announce in 1908 that "the atomic hypothesis has become a scientific theory with a solid foundation".

1In June, 905, Einstein finished his long paper "On Electrodynamics of Transport Bodies" which initiated a new era in physics, and put forward the special theory of relativity completely. This is the result of Einstein's brewing and exploration in 10, which largely solved the crisis of classical physics at the end of 19, changed the space-time view of Newtonian mechanics, exposed the equivalence of matter and energy, and created a brand-new world of physics, which is the greatest revolution in the field of modern physics.

Special relativity can not only explain all phenomena that classical physics can explain, but also explain some physical phenomena that classical physics can't, and predict many new effects. The most important conclusion of the special theory of relativity is that the principle of conservation of mass has lost its independence and merged with the law of conservation of energy, so that mass and energy can be transformed into each other. Others include the slow scale of the clock, the constant speed of light, the zero rest mass of photons and so on. Classical mechanics has become the limit case of relativistic mechanics at low speed. So mechanics and electromagnetism are unified on the basis of kinematics.

1905 In September, Einstein wrote a short article, is the inertia of an object related to the energy it contains? ",as an inference of relativity. Mass-energy equivalence is the theoretical basis of nuclear physics and particle physics, and it also paved the way for the release and utilization of nuclear energy in the 1940s.

In this short period of six months, Einstein's breakthrough achievements in science can be said to be "unprecedented". Even if he gave up physics research, even if he only accomplished any of the above three achievements, Einstein would leave an extremely important mark on the history of physics development. Einstein dispelled the "dark clouds in the clear sky of physics" and ushered in a more brilliant new era of physics.