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08/25/2004

Jumping the Gun on a Centennial

Take a look at the following titles of four papers published in
1905 in the German journal Annalen der Physik: “On a Heuristic
Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of
Light”, “On the Motion of Small Particles Suspended in Liquids
at Rest Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat”, “On
the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” and “Does the Inertia of
a Body Depend on Its Energy Content?”. I don’t know about
you, but if I (a) had been around in 1905, (b) had stumbled upon
these papers in Annalen der Physik and (c) could translate from
the German, it’s unlikely that I would have bothered to read any
of them. I certainly would not have guessed that, 34 years later,
the author of these papers would sign a letter to a president of the
United States of America that would prompt the initiation of a
project that would lead to an abrupt ending of a world war.

Of course, Albert Einstein, my scientific idol, was the author of
those papers. Naturally, I was intrigued when I picked up my
September issue of Discover magazine and found it to be a
“special Einstein issue” with a cartoon of Einstein tinkering with
a clock on the cover. Then my September issue of Scientific
American arrived, another “special issue” with Einstein’s picture
on the cover. Both publications are jumping the gun in
anticipation of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s “annus
mirabilis”, or miracle year, the second in the history of science.
The first miracle year was back in 1665-1666 when Isaac
Newton came up with the invention of calculus, his law of
gravitation and his theory of color.

I’ve written a good bit about Einstein’s achievements in these
columns but I can’t resist joining in this centennial celebration,
albeit premature. Let’s set the background for the 2nd annus
mirabilis. As the 20th century began, it seemed to many that the
physical world was well understood. It was still a Newtonian
world and some prominent scientists thought all that remained in
science was to fill in the details.

But there were some troubling signs that not all was in order.
For example, light was considered to be waves that travel in the
“ether”. Ocean waves travel through the medium of water;
sound waves travel through air as one medium. The ether was
invented to provide a medium for light waves. However, a
recent experiment had shown that there didn’t seem to be such a
thing as the “ether”. Also, Max Planck had proposed that heat
from a hot radiating body was given off in discrete little bursts or
packets, quanta, of energy.

In the “Heuristic” paper, Einstein not only did away with the
ether completely but he also seized upon Planck’s little packets
of energy and made a revolutionary statement. He said that light
behaves as both a packet of wavy energy and as a particle. Then
he showed how these particles of light could strike a metal and
cause electrons to be ejected. This provided the explanation for
the so-called “photoelectric effect”. Einstein received his only
Nobel Prize primarily for his explanation of the photoelectric
effect, upon which are based such items as the solar cell, the
automatic door opener (with its “electric eye”) and the camera
exposure meter.

But his really profound contribution here was his shifty photon
that behaves as both a wave and a particle. Others took up this
idea and over the past century have developed quantum
mechanics that explains in great detail and precision what goes
on in the atomic and subatomic world. This understanding is the
fundamental base for all the wondrous silicon chips and other
devices that are the guts of our computers, cell phones, satellites,
spacecraft, etc. Yet, even today, the question of how not only
light but also other things such as electrons and even atoms can
behave as both waves and particles is still a mystery.

In 1901, the University of Zurich had rejected Einstein’s doctoral
thesis. In 1905, he decided to try again and submitted the
“Moving Bodies” paper, which introduced something called
special relativity. The university thought the paper was sort of
weird and apparently wasn’t impressed. It included such ideas as
the speed of light being the same for everybody everywhere,
moving clocks ticking more slowly than stationary clocks,
masses of objects becoming larger when moving – all really
pretty strange. And how could a guy take off in a speeding
rocket and come back years later to find his twin brother had
aged and turned gray while the returning twin was still in his
prime?

Einstein responded by submitting another bit of work related to
the viscosity and diffusion of sugar molecules in sugar solutions
and showed that he could calculate the size of sugar molecules.
But at that time many were not convinced that such things as
atoms or molecules even existed. In a few days, Einstein
produced the “Motion of Small Particles in a Liquid” paper that
clinched the deal. This paper explained “Brownian motion”,
named after a guy named Robert Brown, who looked at pollen
grains in water under a microscope and saw tiny particles zigging
and zagging in the water. Einstein showed this odd behavior was
just what you expect from water molecules hitting the suspended
particles. The equations he developed can be used today to
simulate stuff ranging from the behavior of airborne pollutants in
the atmosphere to gyrations in the stock market. At any rate, his
Brownian motion paper proved that molecules did indeed exist.

But what about that special relativity paper that didn’t excite the
University of Zurich professors? Admittedly, it didn’t seem to
have any relevance to anything practical. Don’t say that to the
makers of the original Global Positioning System (GPS) that
today provides guidance to everything from missile systems to
ships to upscale golf carts that tell you the distance from your
ball to the pin. The GPS system involves measuring differences
in times of arrival of signals from orbiting satellites. Initially,
there apparently was some disagreement as to whether they had
to consider Mr. Einstein in interpreting the signals. After all,
remember that he said moving clocks tick more slowly? Those
satellites zip around pretty fast up there compared to how fast
we’re zipping around here on the ground.

To tell us where we are from the satellite signals, we in essence
have to compare our clocks with satellite clocks. If we’re off by
small fractions of a second, we could be seriously off in our
location and it could make a heck of difference in club selection
to hit the green. OK, that’s not very important but a missile
landing on the wrong target could be devastating. It seems that
the designers put switches on board the early satellites. The
switches were to be turned on to apply special relativity
corrections if they really were needed. They had to turn on the
switches! (Today, I gather that some sort of ground-based
component of the GPS system eliminates the need for the
relativity corrections.)

Back to 1905, there was the “Inertia” paper. In it Einstein came
to the conclusion that the mass of a body is a “measure” of its
energy content. I’m thinking that he might have come to this
conclusion by trying to push a heavy boulder and musing that it
was as if the boulder had some kind of energy resisting his
pushing. I’m sure this is a stretch, but I imagine that in 1905
anyone hearing of his conclusion would not be appreciative of
the importance of Einstein’s insight.

However, two years later he followed up and, based on special
relativity, actually calculated this “measure”. It was given by an
amazingly simple equation stating that the energy of a body
equals its mass multiplied by the velocity of light squared, E =
mc^2. Such a simple equation, but the velocity of light is such a
big number that a huge amount of energy would be generated if
just a little bit of mass could be converted to energy. In 1945,
the general public was jolted to an awareness of the equation
with the demonstration over Hiroshima and Nagasaki of the
fruits of the Manhattan project initiated after the letter signed by
Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939.

I realize that I’ve covered most of this in earlier columns but I
believe that a miracle year is worth celebrating, if only to
demonstrate the remarkable power of a unique human mind.

Allen F. Bortrum



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-08/25/2004-      
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Dr. Bortrum

08/25/2004

Jumping the Gun on a Centennial

Take a look at the following titles of four papers published in
1905 in the German journal Annalen der Physik: “On a Heuristic
Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of
Light”, “On the Motion of Small Particles Suspended in Liquids
at Rest Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat”, “On
the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” and “Does the Inertia of
a Body Depend on Its Energy Content?”. I don’t know about
you, but if I (a) had been around in 1905, (b) had stumbled upon
these papers in Annalen der Physik and (c) could translate from
the German, it’s unlikely that I would have bothered to read any
of them. I certainly would not have guessed that, 34 years later,
the author of these papers would sign a letter to a president of the
United States of America that would prompt the initiation of a
project that would lead to an abrupt ending of a world war.

Of course, Albert Einstein, my scientific idol, was the author of
those papers. Naturally, I was intrigued when I picked up my
September issue of Discover magazine and found it to be a
“special Einstein issue” with a cartoon of Einstein tinkering with
a clock on the cover. Then my September issue of Scientific
American arrived, another “special issue” with Einstein’s picture
on the cover. Both publications are jumping the gun in
anticipation of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s “annus
mirabilis”, or miracle year, the second in the history of science.
The first miracle year was back in 1665-1666 when Isaac
Newton came up with the invention of calculus, his law of
gravitation and his theory of color.

I’ve written a good bit about Einstein’s achievements in these
columns but I can’t resist joining in this centennial celebration,
albeit premature. Let’s set the background for the 2nd annus
mirabilis. As the 20th century began, it seemed to many that the
physical world was well understood. It was still a Newtonian
world and some prominent scientists thought all that remained in
science was to fill in the details.

But there were some troubling signs that not all was in order.
For example, light was considered to be waves that travel in the
“ether”. Ocean waves travel through the medium of water;
sound waves travel through air as one medium. The ether was
invented to provide a medium for light waves. However, a
recent experiment had shown that there didn’t seem to be such a
thing as the “ether”. Also, Max Planck had proposed that heat
from a hot radiating body was given off in discrete little bursts or
packets, quanta, of energy.

In the “Heuristic” paper, Einstein not only did away with the
ether completely but he also seized upon Planck’s little packets
of energy and made a revolutionary statement. He said that light
behaves as both a packet of wavy energy and as a particle. Then
he showed how these particles of light could strike a metal and
cause electrons to be ejected. This provided the explanation for
the so-called “photoelectric effect”. Einstein received his only
Nobel Prize primarily for his explanation of the photoelectric
effect, upon which are based such items as the solar cell, the
automatic door opener (with its “electric eye”) and the camera
exposure meter.

But his really profound contribution here was his shifty photon
that behaves as both a wave and a particle. Others took up this
idea and over the past century have developed quantum
mechanics that explains in great detail and precision what goes
on in the atomic and subatomic world. This understanding is the
fundamental base for all the wondrous silicon chips and other
devices that are the guts of our computers, cell phones, satellites,
spacecraft, etc. Yet, even today, the question of how not only
light but also other things such as electrons and even atoms can
behave as both waves and particles is still a mystery.

In 1901, the University of Zurich had rejected Einstein’s doctoral
thesis. In 1905, he decided to try again and submitted the
“Moving Bodies” paper, which introduced something called
special relativity. The university thought the paper was sort of
weird and apparently wasn’t impressed. It included such ideas as
the speed of light being the same for everybody everywhere,
moving clocks ticking more slowly than stationary clocks,
masses of objects becoming larger when moving – all really
pretty strange. And how could a guy take off in a speeding
rocket and come back years later to find his twin brother had
aged and turned gray while the returning twin was still in his
prime?

Einstein responded by submitting another bit of work related to
the viscosity and diffusion of sugar molecules in sugar solutions
and showed that he could calculate the size of sugar molecules.
But at that time many were not convinced that such things as
atoms or molecules even existed. In a few days, Einstein
produced the “Motion of Small Particles in a Liquid” paper that
clinched the deal. This paper explained “Brownian motion”,
named after a guy named Robert Brown, who looked at pollen
grains in water under a microscope and saw tiny particles zigging
and zagging in the water. Einstein showed this odd behavior was
just what you expect from water molecules hitting the suspended
particles. The equations he developed can be used today to
simulate stuff ranging from the behavior of airborne pollutants in
the atmosphere to gyrations in the stock market. At any rate, his
Brownian motion paper proved that molecules did indeed exist.

But what about that special relativity paper that didn’t excite the
University of Zurich professors? Admittedly, it didn’t seem to
have any relevance to anything practical. Don’t say that to the
makers of the original Global Positioning System (GPS) that
today provides guidance to everything from missile systems to
ships to upscale golf carts that tell you the distance from your
ball to the pin. The GPS system involves measuring differences
in times of arrival of signals from orbiting satellites. Initially,
there apparently was some disagreement as to whether they had
to consider Mr. Einstein in interpreting the signals. After all,
remember that he said moving clocks tick more slowly? Those
satellites zip around pretty fast up there compared to how fast
we’re zipping around here on the ground.

To tell us where we are from the satellite signals, we in essence
have to compare our clocks with satellite clocks. If we’re off by
small fractions of a second, we could be seriously off in our
location and it could make a heck of difference in club selection
to hit the green. OK, that’s not very important but a missile
landing on the wrong target could be devastating. It seems that
the designers put switches on board the early satellites. The
switches were to be turned on to apply special relativity
corrections if they really were needed. They had to turn on the
switches! (Today, I gather that some sort of ground-based
component of the GPS system eliminates the need for the
relativity corrections.)

Back to 1905, there was the “Inertia” paper. In it Einstein came
to the conclusion that the mass of a body is a “measure” of its
energy content. I’m thinking that he might have come to this
conclusion by trying to push a heavy boulder and musing that it
was as if the boulder had some kind of energy resisting his
pushing. I’m sure this is a stretch, but I imagine that in 1905
anyone hearing of his conclusion would not be appreciative of
the importance of Einstein’s insight.

However, two years later he followed up and, based on special
relativity, actually calculated this “measure”. It was given by an
amazingly simple equation stating that the energy of a body
equals its mass multiplied by the velocity of light squared, E =
mc^2. Such a simple equation, but the velocity of light is such a
big number that a huge amount of energy would be generated if
just a little bit of mass could be converted to energy. In 1945,
the general public was jolted to an awareness of the equation
with the demonstration over Hiroshima and Nagasaki of the
fruits of the Manhattan project initiated after the letter signed by
Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939.

I realize that I’ve covered most of this in earlier columns but I
believe that a miracle year is worth celebrating, if only to
demonstrate the remarkable power of a unique human mind.

Allen F. Bortrum