The Rise Of Einsteinian Special Relativity Essay

The general and widespread acceptance of Sir Isaac Newton’s models and laws may often be taken for granted, but this has not always been so. Throughout history, scientists and philosophers have built on each other’s theories to create improved and often revolutionary models. Although Newton was neither the first nor the last to bring major innovations to society, he was one of the most notable ones; many of his contributions are still in use today. With the formulation of his laws of motion, Sir Isaac Newton contributed to the downfall of Aristotelianism and provided a universal quantitative system for approximating and explaining a wide range of phenomena of space and the physics of motion, revolutionizing the study and understanding

Einstein has brought many insights of life including the theory of the speed of light, which has led to the special theory of relativity that molded the way science, is today. “For example, various experiments, including the Michelson-Morley experiment, failed to measure the expected changes in the speed of light relative to the motion of the Earth. Due to this Einstein recognized that light has a measured speed that is independent of the speed of the observer” (“Albert Einstein.” 4). “Einstein showed in 1907 that mass is related to energy by the famous equation E=mc^2, which indicates the enormous amount of energy that is stored as mass, some of which is released in radioactivity and nuclear radiations, for example in the sun” (4).This enabled Einstein to be able to start and finish the general theory of relativity.

The Economist’s article “The most beautiful theory” discusses Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It explains the origins of general relativity through Einstein’s initial thought experiments that eventually led to the realization that the university functions in four dimensions (“three spatial dimensions, one temporal one”) and that mass curved space-time, creating gravity. Over time, Einstein’s theory was verified by observations, such as those made by Arthur Eddington when he noticed the skew of light around the sun during an eclipse, which could only have been due to distorted space-time. His theory has also been expanded over the years as physicists try to combine general relativity with

The Special Theory of relativity is an acknowledged physical theory that revolutionized advancements in the relationship between space, and time. The theory is one of the most interesting discoveries that are still used today in science fiction movies such as Star Wars, and Star Trek through the use of black holes, and time travel due to it’s astonishing results, and it occurrence at speeds close to the speed light, which can be appealing to a wide range of audience. This was a harvest from six years of extremely handwork by Albert Einstein. Einstein used resources that were widely available to the public due to his economic constraints. It wasn’t until 1905, when Einstein finally had finished and published his discoveries, and gatherings

Through wonder and complicated thinking Einstein gave a strong argument on how space and time could be curved. By Einstein creating this theory he completely altered the way we could think of space and time. Einstein pictured space as a three-dimensional version of a thin rubber sheet. If you put a heavy object on the sheet, it makes a dent, and therefore an object's path would be affected by that dent. So, planets orbit the sun because “the space around the sun is curved in the 2-D equivalent of a funnel or basin”.( http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/20th_people_einstein.html) “The curvature of space results in the effects of gravity. This notion of curved space becomes more tangible . . . occurs because its curvature of space”. (http://www.fi.edu/learn/case files/einstein/curved.html) Einstein introduced this special theory of relativity because it dealt only with the special case of motion in frames of reference that are neither increasing nor decreasing to the viewer. In other words, “the frames of the reference are . . . a consistent speed in a straight line”. (Jake Goldberg pg.47) Einstein also changed how we now think about gravity itself! He came up with his own theory of gravity as well, called Equivalence Principle. “Einstein said that when he was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me: 'If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight.' I was

Since he saw no oscillation throughout his experiments he believed that light could only be a particle. This theory was supported by lights rectilinear propagation. A simple experiment

Modern physicists found, however, that at the physical extremes of nature-the microcosmic realm of atomic particles and the macrocosmic world of heavy astronomical bodies-the laws of Newton’s principia did not apply. German physicist, Albert Einstein, made public his special theory of relativity, a radically new approach to the new concepts of time, space, motion, and light. Building on Einstein’s theories, Werner Heisenberg theorized that since the very act of measuring subatomic phenomena altered them, the position and the velocity of a subatomic particle could not be measured

In 1916 Einstein proposed his new General Theory of Relativity that built upon Newton's Universal Theory of Gravitation which showed "that gravity is responsible for the motions of both planets and falling objects near the Earth" (Fix, p 86). Einstein' theory "describes gravity as a curvature in four-dimensional spacetime" (Singh, p. 502). The original intent of the theory was to explain the inaccuracies of Mercury's orbit when using Newton's law and the Sun's bending of light.

Theory: During the early part of the seventeenth century, Galileo experimentally examined the concept of acceleration. One of his goals was to measure the acceleration due to gravity, or the acceleration of freely falling objects. Unfortunately, his timing devices were not precise enough to measure the free fall time directly. He decided to “dilute” gravity by using fluids, inclined planes, and pendulums.

Moreover, The speed of light is faster than everything that exists. For instance, Light can move at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light is also faster than the speed of sound (How fast is the speed of light, Para 1, 2015). For a while in the 1500s and the 1600s, scientists were trying to figure how to measure the speed of light. Of course, many different scientists like Galileo tried to do experiments on this, but they never turned out to work(A Case of History in Astronomy and Physics, The Speed of Light, para 9, 10, 11). Although, in 1676 a man named Ole Roemer measured the speed of light, Ole Roemer explained, that the speed of light is too much to measure (A Case of History in Astronomy and Physics, The Speed of Light, para 9, 10, 11). Finally, the speed of light is the fastest thing that has ever

Light is the fastest thing in the universe, nothing can travel faster than light. Galileo was the first person to attempt to measure the speed of light, but he was not successful. A Danish astronomer named Olaus Roemer was the first successful person to measure the speed of light in 1676. He discovered it by the observations of the eclipse of the moons on Jupiter.

In order to attempt to trace the origins of the modern science that we now refer to

Introduction The Quantum Theory was the second of two theories which drastically changed the way we look at our physical world today, the first being Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Although both theories revolutionized the world of physics, the Quantum Theory required a period of over three decades to develop, while the Special Theory of Relativity was created in a single year. The development of the Quantum Theory began in 1887 when a German physicist, Heinrich Hertz, was testing Maxwell’s Theory of Electromagnetic Waves.

Light, a concept that has been worked with for many years dating back to 500 B.C. Pythagoras hypothesized that humans perceive light due to the human eyes ability to emit rays upon the environment and the emittance gives a human his or her sight (Sekuler). Afterward, human intellectuals started making it more concise to present day knowledge of light. This development of light came from two intellectuals named Christian Huygens and Isaac Newton. Newton exclaimed during the 1700s that light was a stream of particles carrying energy but Huygens, Newton’s contemporary, thought that light needed this invisible “ether” in order for these streams to make light travel. Then, a couple hundred years later, modern scientists such as Albert Einstein, Thomas Young, and Augustin Fresnel proved Isaac’s and Huygens’ hypotheses of light (Rossing, 23-24). This is how the basis of light was created.

Before Einstein, Scientists believed that light waves travelled through a medium called ether. Einstein proved that ether was irrelevant and that light doesn’t travel through a medium. Einstein proved this by figuring out that the speed of light was constant, and in order for ether to be the medium light waves travel through, the speed of light would change depending on the observer. This discovery was one piece of the Specific Theory of Relativity.