Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: How Would You Explain Einstein's Theories To a Nine-Year-Old?

Posted by BeauHD on from the explain-like-I'm-five dept.

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.

5 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. I Wouldn't. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    next.

    1. Re:I Wouldn't. by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      But your argument is just as incorrect. The complexity of relativity gives us a lower bound for Einstein's smartiness, not an upper one. And quite often, as we understand things better, they do actually become simpler - the move from Aristotle to Kepler and Newton made the solar system a lot simpler.

      --

      Stephan

  2. Sit them down in front of some good science TV by istartedi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wouldn't try to do it directly. Plenty of other people have covered these areas, and on a level that makes it accessible. For time dilation, Carl Sagan's original Cosmos series had an excellent depiction of time dilation and travel approaching the speed of light. IIRC, part of it was based on a "what if" scenario in which c was something you could approach by peddling a bicycle really hard. When you returned from the ride, all your friends were grey-haired old people.

    I'm sure there is some other good programming out there.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  3. Einstein Disagrees by BlazeMiskulin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.""
    -- Albert Einstein

    1. Re:Einstein Disagrees by raftpeople · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'd like to see Einstein explain bitcoin to his grandma.