Albert Einstein: He Who Dared to Challenge Newton's Physics

July 10, 2023

Julie Arangio

11th Grade

Liceo Statale Niccolò Machiavelli Firenze

Introduction

In 1905, 26-year-old Albert Einstein published three papers that debunked the principles of Newton’s mechanics and shifted the world’s perspective on the forces that regulate our universe. Needless to say, he would later become known as one of the greatest and most influential minds of the 20th century. Let’s take a step back to understand how this all happened.

Early life

On the morning of March 14th, 1879, Pauline Koch gave birth to her first son. Albert was a peculiar child, who found great interest in studying compasses and reading geometry books. He excelled in math and physics but struggled to keep up with humanitarian subjects at school. He finished his studies in Zurich, Switzerland, where he began to work on his groundbreaking theories. 

The 1905 Papers 

At the time, it was thought that light came in the form of continuous waves. The existing science baffled Einstein, whose studies had instead led him to believe that light is composed of tiny bundles of energy called photons. The first of the three papers he published in 1905 was dedicated precisely to this theory. In it, he explained that when photons hit a material surface, their energy is able to break the surface’s electrons free of the forces that hold them in place, which results in an emission of electrons.

In the second paper he published in 1905, Einstein addressed another dead end that scientists had been scratching their heads over. Botanist Robert Brown had previously discovered that microscopic particles move in a jiggly and irregular manner when suspended in a fluid. This phenomenon had been named “the Brownian motion,” and its causes were still unknown. Einstein suggested that these movements were given by the random collisions of the microscopic particles with the fluid’s molecules. This allowed him to both explain the causes of the Brownian motion and demonstrate the existence of molecules

The third paper that Einstein published in 1905 introduced the theory of special relativity. It is broken down into two core principles: First, the laws of physics stay the same, no matter how fast an object is moving. Second, light always moves at the same speed and nothing can go faster than it. The main conclusion of these principles is that space and time are dimensions of the same entity, which today we know as space-time. Another consequence of special relativity is expressed in Einstein’s most famous equation, E=mc2. This equation establishes an important relationship between energy and mass, suggesting that energy can be converted into mass and vice versa. 

World War II

During the outbreak of World War II, Einstein fled Germany because of his Jewish ancestry. He moved to New Jersey, in the United States, where he continued his research. Although he was never directly involved in the development of atomic weapons, his equation E=mc2 played a crucial role in the field. At first, Einstein had been in favor of such operations, but as the potential destructiveness of these weapons became more and more evident, he began to express deep concerns.

In 1955, during the peak of the Cold War, he published the Russell-Einstein Manifesto along with British mathematician Bertrand Russell. The document stressed the need to resolve the conflict diplomatically, as the use of nuclear weapons could have catastrophic consequences as well as disruptive moral implications. He died later that year, at the age of 76.