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August 19, 2005
Einstein
This year is the 100th anniversary of Einstein's big year. In 1905 Einstein produced four physics papers that were to change the face of modern science.
The paper's were at first ignored, due mostly to the fact that Einstein was a lowly patent clerk who had been refused a promotion as his superior felt he needed to gain a better grasp of basic mechanics.
I'm dissapointed that in my physics course in college we never studied Einsteins original papers. In fact, we never studied any original papers from any source. All our learning derived from the scientific equivalent of Cliff notes. All our test books were interpretations of the theories of the greats. We only used distillations of the work to manipulate mental / mathematical models of specific situations.
Einstein had no such help and yet managed to create great work. In fact most of the greatest scientists had very little in the way of interpreted material to help them along.
Maybe we should ban textbooks from science classes and go from first principles?
Anyway, happy birthday to E=mc2
Posted by dottie at August 19, 2005 1:31 PM