Easy Lessons In Einstein (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

SCENE: A street car in uniform movement of translation in any direction.
TIME: The present.

The Reader: (looking over the top of a morning paper) Here's something queer -a whole page taken with a new discovery in physics- Eclipse Observations Confirm Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Anything about it in your paper?
The author: Yes. Heres a cartoon on it by Mc-Cutcheon.
The Reader: Must be something to it then. Mc-Cutcheon always knows whats news.
(Reads on with audible fragments)
Most sensational discovery in the history of science - "Greatest achievement of the human intellect"--"Upsets Galileo, Newton, and Euclid"--"Revolution in philosophy and theology." It looks as though I ought to know something about this, doesn't it?
The Author: I think you will have to sometime. And you might as well do it now and get it over with.
The Reader: (running down the column and hitting the high spots) "Parallel lines meet"--"a man moving with the speed of light never grows old"--"gravitation due to a warp in space"--"length of a measuring stick depends upon direction of its motion"--"mass is latent energy"--"time as a fourth dimension"-- why, the man is crazy, isn't he.
The Author: Well, definitions of insanity are so uncertain that it is not safe to say who is crazy. But it seems there's method in his madness-- otherwise how could he have hit upon the exact extent of the sun's attraction on light?
The Reader: (picks up his paper and reads aloud with concentrated attention) "Postulate I. Every law of nature which holds good with respect to a coordinate system K must also hold good for any other system K', provided that K and K' are in uniform movement of translation." Say, do you know anything about this business?
The Author: Well, yes, a little. I have followed the controversy--at a safe distance-- for a number of years.