Einstein's Theory And His Subsequent Elaboration example essay topic

Albert Einstein the 1905 papers: In the first of three seminal papers published in 1905, Einstein examined the phenomenon discovered by Max Planck, according to which electromagnetic energy seemed to be emitted from radiating objects in quantities that were ultimately discrete. The energy of these quantities-the so-called light-quanta-was directly proportional to the frequency of the radiation. This circumstance was perplexing because classical electromagnetic theory, based on Maxwell's equations and the laws of thermodynamics, had assumed that electromagnetic energy consisted of waves propagating in a hypothetical, all-pervasive medium called the luminiferous ether, and that the waves could contain any amount of energy no matter how small. Einstein used Planck's quantum hypothesis to describe visible electromagnetic radiation, or light. According to Einstein's heuristic viewpoint, light could be imagined to consist of discrete bundles of radiation. Einstein used this interpretation to explain the photoelectric effect, by which certain metals emit electrons when illuminated by light with a given frequency.

Einstein's theory, and his subsequent elaboration of it, formed the basis for much of quantum mechanics. The second of Einstein's 1905 papers proposed what is today called the special theory of relativity. At the time Einstein knew that, according to Hendrik An toon Lorentz's theory of electrons, the mass of an electron increased as the velocity of the electron approached the velocity of light. Einstein also knew that the electron theory, based on Maxwell's equations, carried along with it the assumption of a luminiferous ether, but that attempts to detect the physical properties of the ether had not succeeded.

Einstein realized that the equations describing the motion of an electron infact could describe the non accelerated motion of any particle or any suitably defined rigid body. He based his new kinematic on a reinterpretation of the classical principle of relativity-that the laws of physics had to have the same form in any frame of reference. As a second fundamental hypothesis, Einstein assumed that the speed of light remained constant in all frames ofreference, as required by classical Maxwellian theory. Einstein abandoned the hypothesis of the ether, for it played no role in his kinematics or in his reinterpretation of Lorentz's theory of electrons. As a consequence of his theory Einstein recovered the phenomenon of time dilatation, wherein time, analogous to length and mass, is a function of the velocity of a frame ofreference (Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction). Later in 1905, Einstein elaborated how, in a certain manner of speaking, mass and energy were equivalent.

Einstein was not the first to propose all the elements that went into the special theory of relativity; his contribution lies in having unified important parts of classical mechanics and Maxwellian electrodynamics. The third of Einstein's seminal papers of 1905 concerned statistical mechanics, a field of study that had been elaborated by, among others, Ludwig Boltzmann and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Unaware of Gibbs' contributions, Einstein extended Boltzmann's work and calculated the average trajectory of a microscopic particle buffeted by random collisions with molecules in a fluid or in a gas. Einstein observed that his calculations could account for brownian motion, the apparently erratic movement of pollen in fluids, which had been noted by the British botanist Robert Brown.

Einstein's paper provided convincing evidence for the physical existence of atom-sized molecules, which had already received much theoretical discussion. His results were independently discovered by the Polish physicist Marian von Smoluchowski and later elaborated by the French physicist Jean Perrin. The General Theory of Relativity After 1905, Einstein continued working in all three of the above areas. He made important contributions to the quantum theory, but increasingly he sought to extend the special theory of relativity to phenomena involving acceleration. The key to an elaboration emerged in 1907 with the principle of equivalence, in which gravitational acceleration was held a priori indistinguishable from acceleration caused by mechanical forces; gravitational mass was therefore identical with inertial mass. Einstein elevated this identity, which is implicit in the work of Isaac Newton, to a guiding principle in his attempts to explain both electromagnetic and gravitational acceleration according to one set of physical laws.

In 1907 he proposed that if mass were equivalent to energy, then the principle of equivalence required that gravitational mass would interact with the apparent mass of electromagnetic radiation, which includes light. By 1911, Einstein was able to make preliminary predictions about how a ray of light from a distant star, passing near the Sun, would appear to be attracted, or bent slightly, in the direction of the Sun's mass. At the same time, light radiated from the Sun would interact with the Sun's mass, resulting in a slight change toward the infrared end of the Sun's optical spectrum. At this juncture Einstein also knew that any new theory of gravitation would have to account for a small but persistent anomaly in the perihelion motion of the planet Mercury.

About 1912, Einstein began a new phase of his gravitational research, withthe help of his mathematician friend Marcel Grossman n, by phrasing his work in terms of the tensor calculus of Tull io Levi-Civita and Gregorio Ricci-Curb astro. The tensor calculus greatly facilitated calculations in four-dimensional space-time, a notion that Einstein had obtained from Hermann Minkowski's 1907 mathematical elaboration of Einstein's own special theory of relativity. Einstein called his new work the general theory of relativity. After a number of false starts, he published (late 1915) the definitive form of the general theory.

In it the gravitational field equations were covariant; that is, similar to Maxwell's equations, the field equations took the same form in all equivalent frames of reference. To their advantage from the beginning, the covariant field equations gave the observed perihelion motion of the planet Mercury. In its original form, Einstein " general relativity has been verified numerous times in the past 60 years, especially during solar-eclipse expeditions when Einstein's light-deflection prediction could be tested. 346.