Term Papers on Albert Einstein And His Theories

Term Paper Title	Albert Einstein And His Theories
# of Words	1865
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	7.46

Albert Einstein and His Theories

        Einstein, Albert (1879-1955), German-born American physicist and Nobel
laureate, best known as the creator of the special and general theories of
relativity and for his bold hypothesis concerning the particle nature of light.
He is perhaps the most well-known scientist of the 20th century.
        Einstein was born in Ulm on March 14, 1879, and spent his youth in
Munich, where his family owned a small shop that manufactured electric machinery.
He did not talk until the age of three, but even as a youth he showed a
brilliant curiosity about nature and an ability to understand difficult
mathematical concepts. At the age of 12 he taught himself Euclidean geometry.
        Einstein hated the dull regimentation and unimaginative spirit of school
in Munich. When repeated business failure led the family to leave Germany for
Milan, Italy, Einstein, who was then 15 years old, used the opportunity to
withdraw from the school. He spent a year with his parents in Milan, and when it
became clear that he would have to make his own way in the world, he finished
secondary school in Arrau, Switzerland, and entered the Swiss National
Polytechnic in Zürich. Einstein did not enjoy the methods of instruction there.
He often cut classes and used the time to study physics on his own or to play
his beloved violin. He passed his examinations and graduated in 1900 by studying
the notes of a classmate. His professors did not think highly of him and would
not recommend him for a university position.
        For two years Einstein worked as a tutor and substitute teacher. In 1902
he secured a position as an examiner in the Swiss patent office in Bern. In 1903
he married Mileva Mariç, who had been his classmate at the polytechnic. They had
two sons but eventually divorced. Einstein later remarried.

Early Scientific Publications
        In 1905 Einstein received his doctorate from the University of Zürich
for a theoretical dissertation on the dimensions of molecules, and he also
published three theoretical papers of central importance to the development of
20th-century physics. In the first of these papers, on Brownian motion, he made
significant predictions about the motion of particles that are randomly
distributed in a fluid. These predictions were later confirmed by experiment.
        The second paper, on the photoelectric effect, contained a revolutionary
hypothesis concerning the nature of light. Einstein not only proposed that under
certain circumstances light can be considered as consisting of particles, but he
also hypothesized that the energy carried by any light particle, called a photon,
is proportional to the frequency of the radiation. The formula for this is E =
hu, where E is the energy of the radiation, h is a universal constant known as
Planck's constant, and u is the frequency of the radiation. This proposal-that
the energy contained within a light beam is transferred in individual units, or
quanta-contradicted a hundred-year-old tradition of considering light energy a
manifestation of continuous processes. Virtually no one accepted Einstein's
proposal. In fact, when the American physicist Robert Andrews Millikan
experimentally confirmed the theory almost a decade later, he was surprised and
somewhat disquieted by the outcome.
        Einstein, whose prime concern was to understand the nature of
electromagnetic radiation, subsequently urged the development of a theory that
would be a fusion of the wave and particle models for light. Again, very few
physicists understood or were sympathetic to these ideas.

Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity
        Einstein's third major paper in 1905, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving
Bodies," contained what became known as the special theory of relativity. Since
the time of the English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton, natural
philosophers (as physicists and chemists were known) had been trying to
understand the nature of matter and radiation, and how they interacted in some
uni...

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