Einstein

2 Pages 532 Words

"Einstein saw contradictions that no one else saw, and he understood they offered profound lessons," says physicist John Rigden of Washington University in St. Louis, author of Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness. While other Scientists, clinging to outdated theories, slaved away, trying to explain away the contradictions that served as the foundation for Einstein’s work. Einstein set out these contradictions in his groundbreaking 1905 papers -- three major works and an addendum -- then resolved them, proposed verifying experiments and predicted the results:
In March, Einstein explained how light works. Light was then thought to travel as a wave, but that theory couldn't explain why surfaces bathed in ultraviolet light gave off electrons. Einstein proposed that instead of light waves, light particles, or "quanta" (now called photons), punched out electrons from surfaces to create this "photoelectric effect." The paper kick-started the quantum theory of matter that underlies modern physics, makes lasers possible and supersedes Isaac Newton's centuries-old theory of light
In May, he explained how matter works. Atoms were a controversial idea when Einstein's second paper proposed an atomic explanation for the unexplainably random motions of particles suspended in liquid. The random vibrations of the liquid's molecules battered the larger particles, Einstein explained. The resultant motions revealed the size of the atoms inside those molecules. In 1908, using an experiment outlined in the paper, researchers verified its predictions to prove that atoms existed, a subject of debate since the fifth century B.C.
In June, he explained how space and time obey the speed of light. Light was then thought to travel in 186,000-miles-per-second waves though an invisible ether that served as a universal timekeeper for every event. But an 1887 experiment that set out to definitively prove the existence of this universal medi...