Published by Gao Lu on August +0 1 17: 03: 00, 2005.
In the United States, two scientists completed the experiment of light, and the result was contrary to the theory of physics. In Paris, scientists are puzzled by minerals that seem to have infinite energy. At the same time, astronomers and geologists are arguing because solar energy can't shine forever. These are the problems that puzzled scientists 100 years ago. It was also 100 years ago that the answers to these questions appeared in the German academic journal Yearbook of Physics in the form of a series of papers. These papers solved these problems in less than 70 pages, thus subverting the accepted natural theory for centuries. And their author is just an unknown young man-Einstein, only 26 years old.
Einstein was born in 1879 in a middle-class family in Ulm, Germany. When he was a child, he showed some of the same characteristics as Newton, a genius in the17th century: taciturn, introverted and terrible temper. But at the age of five, Einstein took an unusual interest in nature. His father gave him a compass, and the sight of the pointer turning under the invisible effect of magnetic force surprised him. Just like Newton saw a falling apple, Einstein had a strange feeling that what he saw was far-reaching.
Growing up, Einstein began to doubt authority like Newton. Tired of school life, disrespectful to teachers,/kloc-dropped out of school at the age of 0/6. The teacher concluded that Einstein would accomplish nothing. What they didn't know was that he had finished his first scientific paper (which suggested that electromagnetic phenomena should study through experiments).
However, to outsiders, Einstein was doomed to accomplish nothing. When studying at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, all the teachers thought that he was lazy and arrogant, and finally graduated with the second lowest score in the class. Unable to enter academic institutions, Einstein made a living as a private teacher and found a temporary job in Berne Patent Office two years later.
There, Einstein's scientific enthusiasm, which was stifled by formal education, finally reappeared in Generation. He and some like-minded friends began to think about the scientific problems and puzzles faced by scientists.
The most puzzling thing at that time was 1900 German physicist Planck's hypothesis that the energy of light and heat came from "quantum". Planck himself doesn't like this hypothesis, but it seems to be the only way to explain the radiation energy of an object when it is heated. Einstein decided to explore this relationship, which became the basis of his first important paper in 1905. Einstein proved that quantum theory can also be applied to other phenomena. He even used this theory to explain the "photoelectric effect", that is, some metals will release electrons under the action of light with appropriate frequency.
Einstein's paper gave great support to quantum theory-Planck began to pay attention to this unknown young man at that time. A few weeks later, Einstein made another major breakthrough in Brownian motion of matter. Einstein proved that Brownian motion showed the existence of atoms. At that time, many famous scientists thought that atoms were fictional, just to make calculations easier. Einstein believes that Brownian motion is the result of a large number of atoms that are invisible to the naked eye, and its size can be known by measurement.
Experiments quickly proved Einstein's point of view and laid another pillar of modern physics: the atomic characteristics of matter. However, even this breakthrough is eclipsed by Einstein's two papers 1905 published in June and September. The latter two papers put forward new concepts about time and space, which have far-reaching significance for changing the historical process.
An incredible achievement
At that time, it was generally believed that time and space were fixed and eternal, but some existing evidence questioned this. Theoretical physicists have noticed that when a magnet moves relative to an electrical conductor, or when an electrical conductor moves relative to a magnet, electromagnetic laws will produce different results, but according to common sense, the results should be the same. 1887, American physicists Albert Michelsen and Edward Morley discovered an even more unusual phenomenon: no matter how people try to measure the speed of light, the measured speed of light is constant. This is obviously contrary to the mainstream view at that time.
Einstein pointed out these anomalies with amazing confidence in his paper, and put forward two basic viewpoints: first, the principles of physics apply to any object, no matter how it moves; Second, the speed of light is not affected by the observer's speed in vacuum. Then, he used simple mathematical operations to prove that under these two principles, the speed of light is the limit speed, and objects close to the speed of light will become smaller and flatter. Einstein thought that even time would be affected. A moving clock goes slower than a stationary clock.
Even Einstein was puzzled by a result of relativity, which appeared when he combined relativity with the law of conservation of energy. The result means that any substance (M) is an incredible source of energy (E), and the equation he later summed up is E = mc2, where C stands for the speed of light.
It took the scientific community some time to respond to the amazing claims of so many nobody from outside the academic world. First Planck and other theorists, and then people engaged in scientific experiments began to take his predictions seriously. Einstein became famous when the predictions were confirmed one by one. 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, that is, 10, that the laurel was put on his head.
This award is nominally a reward for Einstein's contribution to the photoelectric law, but his other creative theories are equally worthy of this reputation. E = mc2 explains the mysterious energy source of "magic" minerals: their atoms undergo radioactive decay, and a small amount of matter is converted into a large amount of energy. This equation also explains why stars can shine forever by converting a small amount of hydrogen fuel mass into huge light and heat.
E = MC2 equation has been applied to nuclear power plants, providing 16% of the world's electricity, while nuclear weapons still have a great impact on the international situation. From GPS navigation system to burglar alarm, from medical scanner to solar calculator, Einstein's theory is also the basis of many technologies today.