Einstein Relatively Simple: Our Universe Revealed in Everyday Language
Ira Mark Egdall
Author Bio:
Ira Mark Egdall is also the author of the eBook Unsung
Heroes of the Universe and a popular science writer for
DecodedScience.com. He is a retired aerospace program
manager with an undergraduate degree in physics from
Northeastern University. Mark now teaches lay courses in
modern physics at Lifelong Learning Institutes at
Florida International University, the University of
Miami, and Nova Southeastern University. He also gives
entertaining talks on Einstein and time travel. When not
thinking about physics, Mark spends his time playing
with his grandchildren and driving his wife of 45 years
crazy.
Author Links - The link for any or all of the following...
Website: iramarkegdall.com
http://iramarkegdall.com/ (NOTE: A new web site is
currently in progress)
Twitter: @IMEgdall https://twitter.com/IMEgdall
Facebook: TBD
Linkedin: Mark Egdall
Goodreads: Ira Mark Egdall
Amazon: TBD
Giveaway One or two hard copies, a few or more softbacks all signed by the author. Ebooks number TBD
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Tags/Labels: Einstein Relatively Simple, Ira Mark Egdall, popular science, scientific novels,
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Book Genre: Popular Science
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing
Release Date: February 24, 2014
Buy Link(s):
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Relatively-Simple-UniverseRevealed/dp/9814525596/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=13849628
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Apple http://www.greenapplebooks.com/book/9789814525589
Indybound: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9789814525589
Book Description:
Einstein Relatively Simple brings together for the first time an exceptionally clear
explanation of both special and general relativity. It is for people who always wanted to
understand Einstein’s ideas but never thought it possible.
Told with humor, enthusiasm, and rare clarity, this entertaining book reveals how a
former high school drop-out revolutionized our concepts of space and time. From E=mc2
and everyday time travel to black holes and the big bang, the book takes us all,
regardless of any scientific background, on a mindboggling journey through the depths of
Einstein's universe.
Along the way, we track Einstein through the perils and triumphs of his life — follow
his thinking, his logic, and his insights — and chronicle the audacity, imagination, and
sheer genius of the man recognized as the greatest scientist of the modern era.
Excerpt One (300-500 or so Words):
Prologue
All knowledge begins in wonder.
Aristotle
In June of 1905, former high-school drop-out and lowly patent clerk
Albert Einstein published a paper in the German Annals of Physics
which revolutionized our understanding of space and time. What came to
be known as the theory of special relativity predicted a strange new universe
where time slows and space shrinks with motion.
In that same journal, Einstein proposed light comes in discreet packets
of energy we now call photons. Along with Max Planck’s work, this
insight sparked the quantum revolution. This in turn set off the greatest
technological revolution in human history — enabling the invention of
television, transistors, electronic digital computers, cell phones, digital
cameras, lasers, the electron microscope, atomic clocks, MRI, sonograms,
and many more modern-day devices.
Einstein’s follow-up article in September of 1905 proposed that mass
and energy are equivalent. His famous equation, E = mc2, came to solve
one of the great mysteries of modern science — how the Sun and stars
shine. Some four decades later, Einstein’s breakthrough ushered in the
atomic age.
In December of 1915, Albert Einstein — now Professor of Theoretical
Physics at the University of Berlin — surpassed his already staggering
accomplishments. In the midst of the turmoil and hardships of World
War I, he produced his life’s masterpiece: a new theory of gravity. His
audacious general theory of relativity revealed a cosmos beyond our
wildest imagination. It predicted phenomena so bizarre even Einstein
initially doubted their existence — black holes which trap light and stop
time, wormholes which form gravitational time machines, the expansion
of space itself, and the birth of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago in
the ultimate cosmic event: the Big Bang.
Not since Isaac Newton had a single physicist attained such monumental
breakthroughs, and no scientist since has matched his breathtaking
achievements. In recognition, TIME magazine selected Albert Einstein
above such luminaries as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mohandas
Gandhi, as the “Person of the Century” — the single individual with the
most significant impact on the 20th century.
Albert Einstein has long since passed from this corporal world.
Yet his fame lives on. His discoveries inspire today’s generation of
physicists — providing stepping stones to a new understanding of the
cosmos and perhaps someday a unified theory of all physics. His brilliance,
independence of mind, and persistence continue to be an inspiration
to us all. He remains the iconic figure of science, whose genius
transcends the limits of human understanding.
I wrote Einstein Relatively Simple to tell Einstein’s story — to hopefully
provide the non-expert a clear, step-by-step explanation of how he
came to develop both special and general relativity. My goal is a book
which is comprehensive, fun to read, and most important, understandable
to the lay reader . . .
So come explore how an unknown patent clerk came to develop a
new theory of time and space, how he came to supplant the illustrious
Isaac Newton with a new theory of gravity. Along the way we will examine
the mind of Albert Einstein, who preferred to think in pictures rather
than words, follow his thinking, his logic, and his insights.
To quote one of my students; “You’ll never look at the universe the
same way again!”
.
Excerpt Two (500-800 or so Words):
Excerpt from Chapter 14, Einstein's Masterpiece.
The Lost Years . . .
Berlin
In July 1913, Max Planck and Walther Nernst approached Einstein with
a tantalizing offer — a professorship in Berlin, the “world-capital” of physics, and membership in the prestigious Prussian Academy of Sciences. 13,14
At age 34, he would be appointed to Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin, and become
the youngest member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences — the
“premier scientific society of all Europe.” 15 In addition, he would have no
teaching responsibilities nor any real administrative duties.
After five months of consideration, Einstein accepted the offer. He
left Zurich Poly the following spring, and moved back with his family to
the country of his birth. On arrival in Berlin, he remarked:
The Germans are gambling on me as they would on a prize-winning hen,
but I don’t know if I can still lay eggs.16
On June 28, 1914, four days before Einstein gave his inaugural
address to the Prussian Academy, a Serbian nationalist assassinated
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to Austria-Hungary’s throne, and his
wife, Sophie, while they were visiting Sarajevo. 17 With the pretext he had
been looking for, Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph declared war
on Serbia a month later. World War I, the “War to End All Wars,” had
begun.
On July 31, Serbian ally Russia mobilized its armed forces. The next
day, Austria-Hungary’s ally Germany declared war on Russia. Two days
later, she declared war on France, and then on neutral Belgium to flank
France. In response, Britain declared war on Germany. On August 6,
Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia. The continent was soon ablaze
with the bloodiest and most inexplicable war in its history.
In September of 1914, ninety-three prominent German scientists,
scholars, and artists, including Max Planck, signed a manifesto which
declared support for the Kaiser and the war effort. 18 Albert Einstein refused to sign. Two months later, he put his signature on a counter-manifesto
calling for peace. Only four others dared sign.
Europe in her insanity has started something unbelievable. At such times
as this one realizes what a sorry species of animal one belongs to.19
Albert Einstein
To make matters worse, Einstein’s marriage to Mileva Marić was on
the rocks. As his fame grew, her resentment over the time he spent outside
the home and on his physics grew accordingly.
In the spring of 1912, while a professor in Prague, Einstein had reconnected with his cousin Elsa Löwenthal, a divorcée with two grown daughters
who lived in Berlin.20 Unhappy at home, he began a romantic correspondence.
After several failed attempts at reconciliation, Mileva left Berlin in July
of 1914 and returned to Zurich with the two boys. (See Fig. 14.3.) Seeing
his sons off at the station, Albert “bawled like a little boy.” 21 He wrote to
Elsa; “They used to shout with joy when I came … Now they will be gone
forever.”
Einstein’s mother Pauline was delighted with the news. She had always
disliked Marić intensely. “Oh, if your poor Papa had only lived to see it!”
she told her son.22
In the bitter summer of 1915, Albert Einstein found himself at the lowest
point of his adult life. Not since his parents had left him in the hated Munich
gymnasium and moved to Italy had he felt such despair. With the continent
and much of the world raging with war, his health deteriorating due to lack
of food, his children virtually unreachable in Zurich, and his new theory of
gravity at a dead end, his only solace was the growing attentions of Elsa.
But for Einstein it was literally the dark before the dawn . . .