The History Channel ran a two-hour program on Einstein last night. I had meant to plug this in advance, but got distracted by the Screamy Baby Fun-Time Hour yesterday, and didn’t have time to post.
The show restricted itself more or less to the period from 1900, just before his “miracle year” in 1905, to 1922 or so, when Einstein received his Nobel Prize. This was his most fertile period, scientifically, and they did a fairly comprehensive job of covering his life during this time, including his struggles for acceptance and his complicated personal life.
There were, of course, some distracting elements, as with any show of this type. On the whole, though, it was well done. I’m mostly going to complain about the parts that bugged me, though.
The show follows the standard conventions of the form, mixing talking-heads footage of modern scientists and historians with archival footage and photographs. Happily, Einstein is recent enough, historically, that they didn’t feel the need to do hokey re-enactments of important moments in his life, restricting themselves to the Ken Burns slow-pan thing until the story got to a point where it was reasonable to show newsreel footage of Einstein. The talking-heads segments had some inexplicable moments of hip and edgy odd-angle camera work, though, zooming in on odd parts of the speakers faces.
They had a very good array of talking heads, including Walter Isaacson (author of last year’s highly regarded Einstein: His Life and Universe), Thomas Levenson (author of Einstein in Berlin on the history side, and blogdom’s own Clifford Johnson and the ever-popular Neil deGrasse Tyson to help with the science. The talking of the heads was well done, but for me it was hampered by three distracting problems that might not affect anyone else:
- Walter Isaacson looks and sounds exactly like Union’s lacrosse coach.
- Thomas Levenson looks and sounds a bit like William Petersen of CSI fame
- There was far too much Michio Kaku, something about whom annoys me to no end.
Scientifically, I thought they did a very good job, but they only told part of the story. They mentioned all four of the 1905 papers, but after that, they talked about nothing but Relativity. Now, granted, Relativity is Einstein’s greatest theoretical achievement, and I understand the need to pare things down to a single main thread for dramatic purposes, but it wasn’t the only thing he worked on, despite several direct statements to the contrary. In fact, at the very time when the show talks about him being totally obsessed with Relativity to the exclusion of all else, he was also writing pioneering papers on the physics of radiation, as discussed by Dan Kleppner in Physics Today a few years ago (illicit PDF available here, for non-subscribers).
They also glossed over the story of the photoelectric effect, which is a shame for two reasons. First, they missed out on a good scientific story, in Millikan’s tests of the theory (which has some interesting parallels to the eclipse-picture story they did tell– I’ll say more in another post). More importantly, though, it makes for a really odd ending to the piece, when Einstein finally gets the 1921 Nobel Prize (which, inexplicably, they put in 1922) for the photoelectric effect. They make it sounds as if this were some total afterthought, thrown in there as a snub to Relativity, but in fact, Einstein’s work on the photon theory of light was well worth a Nobel in its own right.
Anyway, those are quibbles that probably wouldn’t matter to most people (unless you, too, happen to work in quantum optics and know Union’s lacrosse coach). On the whole, it was a well-done program, and did a nice job of highlighting and explaining Einstein’s scientific accomplishments, and putting them in context. If you didn’t catch it last night, I recommend watching it in reruns.
What is up with their weird camera work on these specials? I’ve seen too many History Channel programs whose content I cannot recall afterward because I got too distracted by the way they slowly zoom in on the face, until some geezer’s nosehair is filling my screen. Maybe they should have Kevin Smith directing these things, so we just get a nice steady shot that doesn’t distract from the dialogue.
Liked the show quite a bit. I must have subliminally ignored the video effects or been doing Sudoku while they were going on. (I was listening too.) The oft-repeated thought experiments, especially the speeding away from the clock tower, were especially good. In my opinion, they explain a thing in a way that nearly everyone can understand. Even if the less scientifically minded go no further, they are given a gift with those.
Don’t have cable, so didn’t get to see it. Maybe NetFlix will have the DVD.
I really loved Nova on Einstein’s Big Idea, though.
Wasn’t the calculation of the precession of Mercury’s perihelion also another major triumph of General Relativity? Comparable in importance to the prediction of gravitatinal lensing?
It was mentioned in the show, but it was given rather short shrift, sort of like “yeah that’s cool and all, but…. ”
Another thing I’d like to see discussed in detail is the influence of Maxwell’s equations on Special Relativity.
I remember hearing something years ago (the details are quite foggy) about Einstein being intrigued with the speed of light appearing as a constant in Maxwell’s equations. Basically, in order to reconcile his concepts of space, time and the speed of light, Einstein had to choose between Maxwell (c = constant for all observers in any frame of reference) or Newton (time & space are constant).
Einstein of course chose Maxwell and kept c constant for all observers.
The Kip Thorne book (Black Holes and Time Warps) talks about the symmetry of Maxwell’s equations as one of the starting points for special relativity. (At least 1/2 to 2/3 of the book is about relativity and the theoretical ideas about neutron stars and black holes, if the ‘wormhole’ ideas scare you off).
Also wasn’t the photoelectric effect one of the major ideas that lead to the development of quantum mechanics?
Einstein of course chose Maxwell and kept c constant for all observers.
Einstein was not the first to work on the problem. Lorentz and FitzGerald (and probably others, but those are the two names associated with the phenomenology) were working in the 1890s on explanations for the failure of Michelson and Morley to detect the ether wind. I know FitzGerald was trying to preserve Newton’s view, and derived the apparent foreshortening of objects moving at high speed. I’m not sure which side Lorentz took when he derived the coordinate transformation that bears his name (including the factor that FitzGerald independently derived).
I’m not sure what led Einstein to take constant c for all observers in all frames as a postulate, but he showed that that with that postulate he could reproduce the results of Lorentz and FitzGerald, and that no other assumptions were needed to account for the dynamics of macroscopic objects under negligible gravity. The case of non-negligible gravity was worked out later.
Hi Chad and others,
(Thanks for the link, Chad.)
I think it will help to know that the original title of the show was something like “Einstein and the Two Eclipses”. It was all supposed to be a focus on the development of General Relativity, and the testing of it, (that’s why the filmmakers came to see my class on the subject) and his remarkable rise to superstardom as a result of the eclipse results confirming his striking ideas about spacetime. It was not meant to be a survey of all the physics he did. (That would be a very different – perhaps too diffuse – two hour film.) I do not know why the name of the film was changed in the latter stages, but if you think about the film under that working title, you’ll see it fits rather well.
I hope that helps.
Cheers,
-cvj
(While I’m here, let me leave a plug for the new series of The Universe on the History Channel on Tuesdays, including tonight. Er… you should know there’ll be more Kaku.)
One thing, from fairly early on, that annoyed me was when they were motivating general relativity.
The narrator went on for quite a bit about how special relativity didn’t work for any sort of acceleration (and, it appeared that Michio Kaku endorsed this). This simply isn’t true. In the absence of a gravitational field, it is pretty simple to deal with accelerations with plain old special relativity. You can easily deal with a constant linear acceleration, or uniform circular motion, etc.. Even random accelerations can be dealt with.
(The trick is that, at any infinitesimal moment, you have an inertial reference frame, and you just integrate them all together.)
The distinguishing feature of special versus general relativity is the flatness of space, not whether acceleration is involved. The key insight was that gravity was equivalent to acceleration in a curved space.
“the 1921 Nobel Prize (which, inexplicably, they put in 1922)”
Not having seen the show, I’m not sure whether you mean that they called it the 1922 prize or that they said it was awarded in 1922. If it was the latter, they are correct. No prize was actually awarded in 1921, and the “1921 prize” was awarded in 1922.
I didn’t see this special, but I will definitely look into seing it. These types of documentaries always skip periods of time that some of us may find important, and show some sort of bias. I think it’s important to recognize the great impact einstein has had on society for so long, and will continue to inpire others.