- One of science’s greatest minds of all time, Albert Einstein, was born on March
14, 1879, at his family’s home in Ulm, Germany. He shares his birthday with Pi
Day, a celebration of this special never-ending number. - Einstein, who passed away in 1955, is best known for his theory of general
relativity and his mass-energy equivalence formula, E = mc 2 . - At age 17, he enrolled in the Swiss Polytechnic Institute after failing the
entrance exam the previous year. He graduated in 1900, and in 1902 he became
a junior patent examiner in the Swiss Patent Office in Bern, Switzerland, where
he specialized in electrical devices. - The year 1905 came to be known as Einstein’s Miracle Year. He was 26 years
old, and in that year he published four papers that reshaped physics. - Photoelectric effect-The first explained what’s called the photoelectric effect –
one of the bases for modern-day electronics – with practical applications
including television. His paper on the photoelectric effect helped pave the way
for quantum mechanics by establishing that light is both a particle and a wave.
For this work, Einstein was later awarded a Nobel Prize in physics. - Brownian motion- Another 1905 paper related to Brownian motion. In it,
Einstein stated that the seemingly random motion of particles in a fluid
(Brownian motion) was a predictable, measurable part of the movement of
atoms and molecules. - Special relativity- Also in 1905, Einstein published his Special Theory of
Relativity. Before it, space, time, and mass all seemed to be absolutes – the
same for everyone. Einstein showed that different people perceive mass, space,
and time differences, but that these effects don’t show up until you start moving
nearly at the speed of light. - Mass-energy equivalence- The fourth 1905 paper stated that mass and energy
are equivalent. You perhaps know something of this work in Einstein’s famous
equation E=mc 2 . That equation means that energy (E) is equal to mass (m)
multiplied by the speed of light (c) squared. It is, in a way. It means that matter
and energy are the same things. It’s also very profound, in part because the
speed of light is a huge number. - The great genius could envision mechanisms of the universe in a way many of
us have trouble even grasping. His imagination gave him answers to questions
most of us would not think to ask.
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