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Ask Slashdot: How Would You Explain Einstein's Theories To a Nine-Year-Old?
SiggyRadiation writes: A few days ago, my 9-year-old son asked me why Albert Einstein was so famous. I decided not just to start with the famous formula E=mc^2, because that just seemed to be the easy way out. So I tried to explain what mass and energy are. Then I asked him to try to explain gravity to me. The earth pulls at you because it has a lot of mass. But how can the earth influence your body, pull your feet to the ground, without actually touching you? Why is it that one thing (the earth) can influence something else (you) without actually being connected? Isn't that weird? Einstein figured out how energy, mass and gravity work and are related to each other. This is where our conversation ended.
Afterwards I thought: this might be a nice question to ask on Slashdot; how would I continue this discussion to explain it to him further? Of course, with the goal of further feeding his interest in physics.
Afterwards I thought: this might be a nice question to ask on Slashdot; how would I continue this discussion to explain it to him further? Of course, with the goal of further feeding his interest in physics.
...wait until you get the pleasure of trying to explain how "gravity" warps space, which is supposedly nothing at all, and how nothing can be warped. Then there is the whole issue of time versus timing in the context of perception, etc. Not a pleasant place to be if you want the kid to think you are not just another nutter.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I Wouldn't.
Exactly.
If it was possible to explain Einstein's theory of relativity to a nine year old it would mean that Einstein was only as smart as a nine year old, which, obviously is not correct.
I'd like to see Einstein explain bitcoin to his grandma.
I once read an account of a thought experiment where there are a line of cows side by side with their noses all touching a long, straight fence. The farmer attaches an electric fence shocker to one end of the fence and it makes all the cows jump as they feel the shock.
The farmer sees the cows jump one after the other as the electricity reaches each nose
But to a visitor from a nearby city, who happens to be standing at the other end of the fence at the time, the cows all seem to jump up in unison, since the light bringing the image of the far cow arrives at the same time as the electricity arrives to shock the nearest cow.
When the farmer and the passerby meet they find they have different first hand accounts of the same events, proving to the farmer that city folk are ignorant of country ways, and proving to the city slicker that country folk tell tall stories
Nullius in verba
I'd like to see Einstein explain bitcoin to his grandma.
It's a tulip made of numbers! And my grandma loves tulips so she would be an early bitcoin adopter.