I remember looking at his picture and asking my dad who was this man? He told me that it was Albert Einstein, the most famous physicist that ever lived. I didn't know what a physicist was and didn't really care at that point, I just knew that this old guy was a dude.
It was only years later did I really come to appreciate just how much of a dude he really was and just how brilliant he was. I think it was Einstein who gave me my love of physics. I studied it for a while before getting a "proper job" and even now I still think it is wonderful. So much so, that I have decided to write this blog to show you just how great it is.
Before we begin there are a couple of things that have always annoyed me about people explaining physics and they are these... They say things like, "...well we know from the second law of thermodynamics that such and such is correct", without giving you any explaination of what the second law of thermodynamics actually is, why we think that it is correct and why we should trust it in the first place! Or, "...and that is equivalent to 10 atomic bombs" as if you have some idea of what an atomic bomb looks like or how much energy it has. Another, "...well the apple falls because of gravity", without pointing out the fact that we still don't have a clue as to what gravity actually is!
Another problem is that we do take to many things for granted, for example, how do we know the earth goes round the sun? how do we know that the earth is actually spinning ? How do we know that there are such things as atoms? electrons? how do we know that the speed of light really is a constant? Or that light can be described as waves moving though space? How do we know these things? because someone told us, a teacher, some bloke on the television. How did they know? well... someone told them... and how did that person know?
Why don't we question the way children do? We just accept things because sometimes life is just a bit to short to question everything. True enough. But is wasn't always that way. At what point did we stop asking the questions? How old were you when you stopped asking and just accepted?
Sometimes wouldn't it be nice to have the answer, to know something amazing? so when someone asks, how that can be? you can actually give a decent well thought out answer that you understand.
The really important thing about physics is not learning a load of equations and laws, it's about questioning and thinking, trying to understand exactly what things mean and why the universe behaves as it does. The greatest physicist were not the greatest mathematicians, but they were the greatest detectives.
You don't have to be Einstein to love physics, you just need the desire to question. Richard Feynman once said that a child of 5 could ask enough questions in 5 minutes to keep a nobel prize winning physicist busy for live. Could you? Here are a few... how was the universe made? how does the sun work? why are the days longer in summer? what is thunder? what are lightening sprites? why does Jupiter have so many moons? where did our moon come from? How big are atoms? Why can't I see atoms? Why can't I fly like a bird? Why do helium balloons go up? ... So many questions and so little time, so let's get on.
Well, were to start? The history of physics? Galileo, Newton, Einstein himself? Quantum mechanics, gravity, quantum electro dynamics? superconductivity perhaps? space time, Newton's laws of motion, the atom ... how about E=mc2, now there is an idea. After all, this is probably the most famous equation in physics, so lets start there.
It seems that just about everyone has heard of this equation, but what does it actually mean? and just why is it so important?
Well before we get to E=mc2, we need to take a look at a couple of other things first, what is E? what is m? and what is c2? We'll cover these in the next posts and then I'll show you how to get E=mc2.
image of Einstein taken from Wikipedia.
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