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Rebellious independent thinker----Einstein

Lu Gao published on 2005-8-11 17:03:00

United States, two countries A scientist completed an experiment with light, and the results contradicted the theories of physics. In Paris, scientists are baffled by minerals with seemingly endless energy. Meanwhile, astronomers and geologists argue over the fact that solar energy cannot shine forever. These are exactly the questions that troubled scientists 100 years ago. It was exactly 100 years ago that the answers to these questions appeared in the form of a series of papers in the German academic journal "Annals of Physics." These papers answer these mysteries in less than 70 pages, thereby overturning centuries of accepted theories about nature. And their author is just a little-known young man——Einstein, who was only 26 years old.

In 1879, Einstein was born into a middle-class family in Ulm, Germany. As a child, he showed some of the same characteristics as the 17th-century genius Newton: he was taciturn, introverted, and had a terrifying bad temper. . But at the age of 5, Einstein became unusually interested in nature. His father gave him a compass, and he was surprised to see the needle turning under the invisible influence of magnetism. Like Newton when he saw a falling apple, Einstein had a strange feeling that what he saw was of profound significance.

As he grew up, Einstein, like Newton, began to doubt authority. He dropped out of school at the age of 16 because he was bored with school life and disrespected his teachers, who concluded that he would accomplish nothing. They did not know that at that time he had already completed his first scientific paper (the content of which was a proposal to use experiments to study electromagnetic phenomena).

However, in the eyes of outsiders, Einstein was destined to achieve nothing. While studying at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, his teachers considered him lazy and arrogant, and he graduated second from the bottom of his class. Unable to enter an academic institution, Einstein made a living as a private tutor until two years later he found a temporary job at the Patent Office in Bern.

There, Einstein's scientific passion that had been stifled by formal education finally burst out again. He and some like-minded friends began to think about the scientific problems and mysteries faced by scientists.

At that time, the most confusing thing was the hypothesis of German physicist Planck in 1900: the energy of light and heat comes from "quantum". Planck himself did not like this hypothesis, but it seemed to be the only way to explain the energy radiated by objects when heated. Einstein decided to explore the connection, which became the basis for his first important paper in 1905. Einstein showed that quantum theory applies to other phenomena as well. He also used this theory to explain the "photoelectric effect", in which certain metals release electrons under the action of light of appropriate frequencies.

Einstein's paper gave great support to quantum theory - Planck also began to pay attention to this then unknown young man. A few weeks later, Einstein made another major breakthrough in the Brownian motion of matter. Einstein proved that Brownian motion showed the existence of atoms. At the time, many prominent scientists believed that atoms were imaginary simply to make calculations easier. Einstein believed that Brownian motion is the result of the collision of a large number of atoms that were originally invisible to the naked eye, and its size can be known by measuring it.

Experiments quickly proved Einstein's ideas, which established another pillar of modern physics: the atomic nature of matter. Yet even this breakthrough pales in comparison to two papers published by Einstein in June and September 1905. The latter two papers proposed completely new concepts about time and space, which have far-reaching significance in changing the course of history.

Incredible achievement

At that time, it was generally believed that time and space were fixed and eternal, but some existing evidence questions this. Theoretical physicists have noticed that the laws of electromagnetism produce different results when a magnet moves relative to an electrical conductor or when an electrical conductor moves relative to a magnet, whereas common sense would suggest that the results would be the same. In 1887, American physicists Albert Mitchelson and Edward Morley discovered something even more unusual: the measured speed of light was constant regardless of the speed of the person trying to measure it. This was clearly contrary to the prevailing view at the time.

In his paper, Einstein pointed out these anomalies with striking confidence and made two basic points: first, the principles of physics apply to any object, regardless of how it moves; The speed of light in a vacuum is not affected by the speed of the observer. Then, he used simple mathematical operations to prove that under these two principles, the speed of light is the ultimate speed, and objects approaching the speed of light will become smaller and flatter. Einstein believed that even time was affected, with a moving clock running slower than a stationary clock.

Even Einstein found one result of the "theory of relativity" puzzling. This result appeared when he combined the theory of relativity with the law of conservation of energy. The result means that any matter (M) is an incredible source of energy (E). The equation he later summarized is E=Mc2, where c represents the speed of light.

Faced with so many shocking assertions from an unknown person outside academia, it took some time for the scientific community to respond. First, theorists such as Planck, and then people engaged in scientific experiments began to take his predictions seriously. When each prediction was confirmed, Einstein became famous. By 1909, he finally resigned from the patent office and became an associate professor at the University of Zurich. The following year, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics—but it was not until 1922, ten times after he had been nominated, that the crown was awarded to him.

This award is nominally for Einstein's contribution to the photoelectric law, but his other creative theories are equally worthy of this honor. E=Mc2 explains the mysterious energy source of "magic" minerals: their atoms undergo radioactive decay, converting a small amount of matter into a large amount of energy. This equation also explains why stars can shine forever by converting tiny clumps of hydrogen fuel into huge amounts of light and heat.

The E=Mc2 equation is applied in nuclear power plants, which provide 16% of the world's electricity, and nuclear weapons still have a major impact on the international situation. From GPS navigation systems to burglar alarms, from medical scanners to solar-powered calculators, Einstein's theories are also the basis for many of today's technologies