Albert Einstein’s Theories
Albert Einstein published three theoretical papers that were very important to the growth of many twentieth century physics ideas. The first paper, on Brownian motion, explained how to measure the size of atoms in space. The second paper, which was on the photoelectric effect, included a hypothesis about the nature of light. Einstein not only said that sometimes light could be thought of as a bunch of particles but that energy could be carried by light called a photon. In his formula, E=hv, E stands for the energy of the radiation, h stands for the thing that never changes, known as Plank’s constant, and v is how often the radiation occurs. No one thought his theory was right because it was much different than the hundred year theory that said light was one continuous stream. When Einstein’s theory was proved to be correct by Robert Andrews Millikan scientists were very surprised.
Einstein wrote his third paper in 1905. It was called "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." It became known as the special theory of relativity. Einstein had been trying to figure out how light and matter work together, but after thinking about this problem for ten years, he finally realized that the problem didn’t have to do with matter, it had to do with measurement. A big part of his theory of relativity was realizing that measurements of time and space rely on judgments as to whether two far away events can happen at the same time. This caused him develop a theory that no one at that time understood.
In 1907, before Einstein left the patent office, he decided to work on adding to the theory of relativity. He started by saying that gravity is equal to acceleration. His theory wasn’t published until 1916. Things that people thought happened because of gravity sometimes happened because space is three dimensional and time is four dimensional. In his theory Einstein explained that changes in orbiting planets can predict the bending of light. Einstein spent the rest of his life trying to generalize the theory of relativity. He was very successful and made many discoveries.
