He’s well known around the world. Famous Scientist and Physicist. At 30 years of age had already achieved most of all his important work. Winner of a Nobel Prize. His legacy work, is taught and used today. This and much more was accomplished by Dr. Albert Einstein. Who was a 20th Century Physicist, born in 1879 on Germany and died on New Jersey in 1955. So what is some of his work? Probably the two most know are the relativity or special relativity theory and the equivalence of matter and energy better known as E=MC2 equation.
The papers containing these two ideas were ignored at first. Let’s take a look at what really are these ideas. So Einstein, presented the idea of relativity in 1905, however, he completed the Theory of relativity in 1915. But this wouldn’t have been possible without the attention of Max Planck. The theory predicted the perihelion of Mercury’s orbit, a prediction that Newton’s theory fell short of accomplishing; also predicted a measurable deflection of light around the sun when a planet or another sun orbited near the sun. So, a definition of the theory would be: (a) laws of physics are all the same for all non-accelerating observers, (b) the speed of light within a vacuum is the same no matter the speed at which an observer travels. With those definitions as a base, he conclude that space and time were interwoven into a single continuum, called space-time. In other words an event that occurs at the same time for an observer could occur at different times for another observer.
Moving on to another important part of Einstein’s legacy, the equality of matter and energy idea paper “Does the Inertia of a body Depend upon Its Energy Content?” was presented also on 1905, and had the comments and experiment help of Planck, proving the theories. As matter of fact the resulting equation is derived from the relativity theory. So what does the equation means? It relates the equality of the kinetic energy (E) to the mass (M) as the speed of light is a constant so it never changes (C2). This shows us the possibility of changing mass into energy and energy to mass. This is tied to the nuclear energy, smashing particles and capturing the resultant energy, which proves one part of the equation. And the other part is perfectly demonstrated by the particle acceleration process, where low-mass particles zipping through a device collide to form large particles; this process can be achieved in facilities like the “Large Hadron Collider” at CERN. So Einstein is an indirect father to the nuclear bomb. He didn’t participate on the project but the whole idea and realization of the bomb was entirely based on E=MC2 equation.
Einstein won the Physics Nobel Prize in 1921 for discovering the Law of photoelectric effect, which states that when a substance is bombarded by photons (light), electrons will be released by that substance, creating energy; this is why the solar cells can exist. He only won it for this law, because the relativity theory and the equality of matter ad energy where still unknown and not very understandable at that moment. Another curious fact of Einstein, is that he actually came up with these ideas wile working as a Patent Clerk, using his free time on working these ideas which subsequently will make him a well Known genius and probably one of the most capable and intelligent human being ever to exist, and as he said once: “Try not to become a man pf success, but rather try to become a man of value”, and he surely did became a man of value.
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