20 Things You Didn't Know About... Relativity


	20 Things You Didn't Know About... Relativity

Mohir

5-20-2008 2:49 PM

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tags:

relativity, einstein, physics, trivia

Mohir says:

the rest of the 20 in the website

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/8e1998a2-cf90-495f-b259-fb156db26440/7195FF22-8C1E-4251-A1FF-793476557707/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-relativity" href="http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-relativity" style="font-size: 11px;">discovermagazine.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-relativity"><P><B>1</B>   Who invented relativity? Bzzzt—wrong. <A target="_blank" href="http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/spec_rel.html" linkindex="60">Galileo hit on the idea</A> in 1639, when he showed that a falling object behaves the same way on a moving ship as it does in a motionless building.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-relativity"><P><B>2</B>   And Einstein didn’t call it relativity. The word never appears in his original 1905 paper, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” and he hated the term, preferring “invariance theory” (because the laws of physics look the same to all observers—nothing “relative” about it).</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-relativity"><P><B>3</B>   Space-time continuum? Nope, that’s not Einstein either. The idea of time as the fourth dimension <A target="_blank" href="http://www.quantonics.com/Einstein_Minkowski_Space_Time_Diagram.html" linkindex="61">came from Hermann Minkowski</A>, one of Einstein’s professors, who once called him a “lazy dog.”</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-relativity"><P><B>4</B>   But Einstein did reformulate Galileo’s relativity to deal with the bizarre things that happen at near-light speed, where time slows down and space gets compressed. That counts for something.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://discovermagazine.com/2008/mar/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-relativity"><P><B>5</B>   Austrian physicist <A target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hasen%C3%B6hrl#E.C2.A0.3D.C2.A0mc.C2.B2" linkindex="63">Friedrich Hasenöhrl</A> published the basic equation <A target="_blank" href="http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000068" linkindex="64">E = mc<SUP>2</SUP></A> a year before Einstein did.</P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/7195FF22-8C1E-4251-A1FF-793476557707/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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