{"id":10027,"date":"2015-04-28T13:04:38","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T17:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/?p=10027"},"modified":"2015-04-28T13:04:38","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T17:04:38","slug":"einstein-and-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2015\/04\/28\/einstein-and-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Einstein and Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

As mentioned over the weekend, I gave a talk last week for UCALL, part of a series on “The Radical Early 20th Century.” I talked about how relativity is often perceived as revolutionary, but isn’t really, while Einstein’s really revolutionary 1905 paper is often overlooked. And, having put the time into thinking about the subject, I turned the basic theme into a new blog post over at Forbes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nAlbert Einstein is easily one of the most recognizable people in history, and everybody thinks they know why. He\u2019s the guy who, in 1905, completely revolutionized physics, overthrowing the prior order with a stroke of a pen and ushering in the modern era.<\/p>\n

Only, he\u2019s not. At least, not in the way you think. Einstein\u2019s best known for the Theory of Relativity, the first part of which was published in 1905, but this was not, in fact, all that revolutionary. His actual revolutionary contribution to physics in that year was his paper on the photoelectric effect. This is somewhat overlooked, though it\u2019s the one thing specifically mentioned in his Nobel Prize citation, and it played an essential role in launching quantum mechanics.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The actual lecture last week included a good deal more science, specifically a more detailed discussion of relativity with spacetime diagrams leading up to an explanation of why FTL travel is impossible, and a more detailed explanation of how Planck’s quantum hypothesis fixes the blackbody radiation problem. But I’m keeping things non-technical at Forbes; maybe I’ll upload the slides to SlideShare and post them here tomorrow. First, though, I need to grade a giant pile of exams…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As mentioned over the weekend, I gave a talk last week for UCALL, part of a series on “The Radical Early 20th Century.” I talked about how relativity is often perceived as revolutionary, but isn’t really, while Einstein’s really revolutionary 1905 paper is often overlooked. And, having put the time into thinking about the subject,… Continue reading Einstein and Revolution<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,7,23,141,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history_of_science","category-physics","category-quantum_optics","category-relativity","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}