FREE ESSAY ON EINSTEIN

EINSTEIN

Einstein's Mind
Einstein. The name itself seems to bring a vision, in modern times, of a little man
carelessly clad in baggy pants with disordered halo of white hair and soulful brown eyes.
Though the physical description of Einstein might not seem genius material, Einstein was
a modern Merlin. Albert Einstein conjured and revolutionized ideas of space, time and
motion. 
Scientists idolize Albert Einstein for he is most eminent among them, at least in this
century. In person he was childlike. But as a man of scientific thought, he was in league
with such masterminds as Newton, and Galieo. He was the typical absent-minded genius. One
time, he walked into the salon of an ocean liner in his pajamas. Another instance is when
he used a $1,500 check for a bookmark, then lost the book. Such cases seem to make
Einstein come to life.
To give some background on this profound prophet of the mind one must look back to March
14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. The pudgy first child of a bourgeois Jewish couple from
southern Germany, where he was strongly influenced by his domineering musically inclined
mother, who encouraged his passion for the violin. In his earliest years, Albert Einstein
never expressed his genius in any way. Actually he didn't speak till the age of three.
During his teenage years he went through a deep religious period. This phase eventually
subsided when he started questioning math, science, and philosophy of the time. At the
age of 16, Albert devised one of his first thought experiments. These involved no lab and
no materials only a mind. This specific thought experiment consisted of Albert trying to
imagine a light wave in motion to an observer riding along with it. 
When his family moved to Italy, Einstein dropped out of school. A year later he applied
at the famed Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and was denied admission
because of his scores on the entrance examinations. After a year he was excepted in to
the University based on further study. Einstein did not enjoy the methods of instruction
there. He often cut classes and used the time to study physics on his own or play his
beloved violin. 
The funny thing is that Einstein passed his final examinations. He did so by studying
some of the notes of a friend. He wasn't recommended for a teaching position and became a
substitute teacher for a few years. At the age of 23 Albert Einstein settled for a job as
examiner with the Swiss Patent Office. His title was technical expert, third class.
Though his pay was just $675 he was able to marry a fellow student, Mileva Maric. 
Mileva Maric shared Einstein's interest in physics and music. Through later stresses
including a child loss, she became unhappy with her life. Einstein and Mileva were
divorced on 1919. In this agreement Einstein promised to give her the money from the
Nobel Prize he felt sure he would win. Most of their later contact would have to with
their two sons. The elder, Hans Albert, would become a distinguished professor of
hydraulics at the University of California, Berkeley. The younger, Eduard, gifted in
music and literature, would die in a Swiss psychiatric hospital. Mileva, after the
divorce, supported herself by tutoring in mathematics and physics. Many people, to this
day, believe that Mileva had some unacknowledged contribution to special relativity,
though she herself never made any such claims. 
Einstein, meanwhile, had married divorced cousin, Elsa, who cooked and cared for him
during the emotionally draining months when he made intellectual leaps that finally
resulted in general relativity. Elsa gave him personal room and a sense of comfort. She
became used to the fame of Einstein but took it very sensibly. 
With the rise of Nazi power in Germany, Einstein had to leave his position. He
immediately got an offer for a teaching job at the new Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, NJ. In 1939 Einstein's fellow refugees Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner learned
that German scientists had managed to split the atom. Together they tried to seek his
help. He agreed to write a letter to President Roosevelt alerting him to the possibility
that Nazis might try to make the atom bomb. OAAAH! 
Einstein in his late life tried to bring all of his equations under one master big
picture equation. He failed at this goal and died in Princeton on April 18, 1955.
Note: Einsteinium was name after Einstein to credit his greatness!
Bibliography:
www.encarta.com
Time Great People of the 20th Century, Time, copyright 1996
Einstein's Universe:
This area will focus on the master's thought and reflections on the universe and how they
apply to today world applications. 
Relativity extends the human art of "seeing the other fellow's point of view" in to the
realm of physics and astronomy. In one's social behavior, each person is conscious of how
his actions look to other people, and large pieces of his brain seem to be involved in
this task. Similarly in the world of matter and energy, one can ask how the Sun would
appear to an astronomer in the vicinity of a distant star, and come quickly to the
conclusion that it will itself look like an undistinguished star. This might make one
think that speed will alter physics itself. That would confine our galaxy to no laws
whatsoever. Therefore it must be defined from all points of view.
Albert Einstein's project was to define relatively how anything would seem to be no
matter where, when, and how it would be viewed. You can see how one of the difficulties
would be overcome with the simple exercise of trains. 
Exercises:
1. Passengers on a rail train noticed that even at the speed of sixty miles an hour they
couldn't feel the forward motion.
2. On a train one passenger couldn't tell if his train was moving or the one that was
going the opposite direction. 
The Doppler effect may help us understand how to view these points.