Albert Einstein
Learn from yesterday, life today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
-Albert Einstein
Meet Albert Einstein
Ask someone to name a scientist and they’ll probably all give the same name: Albert Einstein. With his famous white hair, recognizable face and his world changing theories, Einstein is the iconic image of a brilliant scientist.
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879. As a young boy Einstein was fascinated about the world around him and constantly asked the questions: Why? How?
When Einstein was 5 years old and sick in bed, his father brought him a compass to keep him amused while he got better. Einstein was captivated and intrigued by it. No matter how hard he shook, spun or rattled the compass, the needle would always point north. He wondered what invisible force made the needle always point in the same direction? He could tell that there had to be a force responsible for this behaviour. Being a thinker, Einstein wanted to figure out just what that force was. Little did Einstein know that he’d be doing the same sort of thinking and discovering for his entire lifetime.
“I can still remember - or at least I believe I can remember - that this experience made a deep and abiding impression on me”. Einstein believed that his fascination with the compass inspired his passion for science. All his life Einstein found school difficult and did not get very good marks (in fact, he once failed a math course). Einstein’s lack of success in school was because he had difficulty concentrating. His mind was constantly racing as he learned about new ideas. Each new idea made him think of new questions and started his “wondering” process. Einstein was always thinking! Einstein did complete all his schooling, with challenges here and there, and went on to become the most important and influential physicist that the world had ever seen.
What makes him so great? Einstein is famous for his discoveries about time, light and gravity and how they affect the universe. His theories changed the world of physics. Physics is the study of matter and energy, and how they interact. He looked at how everything moves, from
the tiniest particles to the largest
galaxies.
For eight years Einstein struggled to answer
the question of how gravity and the universe
worked. Einstein’s theory of special relativity made people think of time and space differently. You may ask, “What’s relativity?” Have you ever experienced a time when you were sitting in a smoothly moving car and it seems as if the buildings outside are moving and you are sitting still? Well, they ARE moving, compared with or
RELATIVE to you. That’s relativity. Special
relativity describes how motion affects time,
length, and mass. The Special Theory makes
some unusual predictions. For instance, if a
spaceship travelling at nearly the speed of light passes by, it would look shorter and heavier to you, and its clock would run slower. E=mc2 is his famous mathematical equation that shows that energy (E) and mass (M) are different forms of the same thing, linked by the speed of light (c). Einstein also came up with the General Theory of Relativity that says that gravity is a result of space-time being curved in four dimensions! The General Theory is necessary for understanding the structure of the universe and objects such as black holes.
Finding this a little hard to understand? Don’t worry. You’ll learn more about this in high school, college, or university. You should know that scientists working on space travel or nuclear physics today depend on his theories and equations. Einstein’s amazing way of thinking earned him the prestigious Noble Prize, helped astronomers to understand the universe, and led to the discovery of black holes (objects with such strong gravity that not even light can escape).
Albert Einstein believed in the power of your imagination and a new way of looking at the universe. He showed how important creativity really is.
Literacy Connections
The power of literacy is an influential way to begin or supplement students’ learning experiences. To help introduce Albert Einstein to your students or to end a lesson, here are two wonderful elementary books for your class to enjoy.
Odd Boy Out
By: Dan Brown
Grade level: Pre-Kindergarten-5
This book is a great introduction to the work and early life of the physicist whose theory of relativity revolutionized scientific thinking forever. Although it does not go into extensive detail about his many theories, it does chronologically follow the major milestones in Einstein’s life and it speaks volumes on how influential he truly was then and even now. This is a wonderful book for primary students who are just getting to know what it really means to be called Einstein.
Rescuing Einstein’s Compass
By: George Juhasz
Grade level: Kindergarten-3
This is a factual story about a young boy named Theo who meets his father's old friend Albert Einstein. The boy and Einstein go for a sail on the lake, and Einstein drops his compass, a gift he has carried with him since childhood. Theo rescues it and learns that each person has a talent for something that contributes to the happiness of others. The delight both Einstein and Theo share in the day's adventures is fully captured, as are their myriad expressions. The explanations of how a compass works and what a physicist does, as well as the rich vocabulary, make this an excellent read-aloud.