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Re: Einstein's Masterwork 

By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (1)
Thu, 18 Apr 24 7:12 AM | 62 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 52498 of 60008
(This msg. is a reply to 51617 by De_Composed)
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I finished Einstein's Masterwork yesterday. It was disappointing.

While Einstein's life is beyond interesting, I wasn't looking for a biography. The book was MOSTLY biography. What I wanted was the nuts & bolts of his greatest accomplishment, the General Theory of Relativity / Theory of Gravitation. For a book that is subtitled "1915 and the General Theory of Relativity," you wouldn't think that would be the part that would come up short.

Put it this way: The text is 208 pages. At 112 pages, it had only gotten as far as 1905, his "Annus Mirabilis" (Miracle Year.) The General Theory is what he developed from 1911 to 1916. Well beyond its halfway point, the book hadn't even touched on it.

I was kind of proud of myself for getting through Gribbin's other book, In Search of Schrodinger's Cat. That book had some serious meat. This one, though? Way too easy and not enough pages devoted to the General Theory.

Chapter 2 was well worth the read. It's a real pageturner covering 1905, the year (four consecutive months, really) when Einstein published papers that:

•     Calculated Avogadro's number via mathematics alone (no experimenting) to a far greater precision than had been previously determined;
•     Explained how atoms and molecules should move and that the movement may account for the observed Brownian motion of dust and pollen particles about which he didn't have much knowledge. After publication, it was found that what he'd described matched Brownian motion perfectly. Moreover, the 'Brownian Rotation' he'd predicted was real. Einstein thereby proved the reality of atoms and molecules;
•     Laid one of the foundation stones on which the whole edifice of quantum theory was built, showing that light could travel in small packets he called 'quanta,' which were later dubbed 'photons.' He presented evidence that the theory of light as a wave is wrong. At the heart of the paper - what he won the 1921 Nobel prize for - he demonstrated that at a basic level, there is no fundamental difference between matter and light after all. Then he used what he'd described to explain the baffling photoelectric effect by which electrons are ejected from metal via light. But the intensity of the light only affects the number of electrons ejected, not their energy level. The effect was already known to experimental physicists but never understood. Light as a wave cannot account for it. It wasn't until 1923 that light's ability to be both a wave and a particle was finally experimentally confirmed;
•     Spelled out the famous relationship between mass and energy, showing that there is no absolute standard of rest against which motion can be measured. This paper, later dubbed 'Special' to distinguish it from his 1916 publication, went on to invalidate the existence of 'Ether' (which physicists were convinced of), then showed that for objects moving at constant velocity relative to one another, each object should be regarded as carrying its own reference frame... including time and distance.

In a fifth paper, also written in 1905 but not published until the 1906, Einstein elaborated on his Special Theory, stating that light carries mass and, conversely, that mass carries energy. He went on to calculate how much energy and developed the most famous equation in all of science. You know the one.

So, Chapter 2 was great. The rest of the book, not so much.

I've already started my next book: "NEWTON: A Very Short Introduction". It was the best book on Isaac Newton's math and science achievements that I could find. While many books on Newton are available, they're mostly biographies.

I'm not sure how long this book will take to read. It's just 132 pages.



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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Atlas Shrugged
By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE
Wed, 27 Mar 24 1:18 PM 		Msg. 51617 of 60008

I finished 'Atlas Shrugged' two days ago. My copy is 1,168 pages so getting through it in six weeks was an effort. But I had to keep up with my buddy! He's blind, you see, which might work to his advantage in that regard since he has to listen to an audiobook and is held to a certain pace. I don't know if that makes his comprehension better or worse, but I'm sure it bolsters his listening skills.

And I'm a slow reader, doubly so thanks to also taking notes on the books... the WORTHWHILE books... we've read. Notes come in handy when we discuss what we've read, and I like being able to reference them much later when I need refreshment in some aspect. I've done that surprisingly often.

In the case of Atlas Shrugged, my notes came to 51 pages. That set a new personal record.

The next book has already been chosen and ordered. It's a return to the author of 'In Search of Schrodinger's Cat,' which I read a year ago and loved. I figure and hope that the author who made quantum mechanics digestible probably did as well with Einstein's General Theory. I tried reading Einstein's own book on Relativity a few months ago. I only got halfway through and aborted, realizing that I wasn't understanding it at all.

This time I expect to do better.

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