Critical Thinking Blog #5

Sharing and Reflecting on Two Research Sources

Einstein’s discoveries about time and space in Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams are all about wonder and awe. The book points to the wonder of physics solving the nature of time and space, it was a beautiful discovery. While we enjoy the book’s portrayal of different ‘thought experiments’ with time, other sources like historical newspaper articles and several scholarly essays convincingly point out the perilous side of Einstein’s discoveries in physics, which led directly to the development of atomic weapons.
One of the sources I found is called, “The Theory Behind the Equation” by Michio Kaku. I googled, “Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity” and I got this resource. This article describes the way that Einstein was lead to the famous equation, E=MC2. The author explains of how Einstein solved the concept of time and light which lead Einstein to write his paper in his volume 17, Annalen der Physik. This article includes information on how Einstein achieved the conception of time and that will be useful in writing my research paper. Another source I found was a book called, “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity” by Max Born. I found this book through the library’s database search for Albert Einstein. This book includes a review of classical physics; origin of time and space measurements, Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy, laws of motion, inertia, and more. It also presents Einstein’s theories of relativity, discussing the concept of simultaneity, kinematics, and much more. This book will provide me with the understanding of Einstein’s theory of relativity and how he used the conception of time.