Einstein Relatively
Simple: Our Universe Revealed in Everyday Language
Ira Mark Egdall
Author Bio:
Ira
Mark Egdall is also the author of the eBook Unsung
Heroes of the Universe
and a popular science writer for DecodedScience.com. He is a retired
aerospace program manager with an undergraduate degree in physics
from Northeastern University. Mark now teaches lay courses in modern
physics at Lifelong Learning Institutes at Florida International
University, the University of Miami, and Nova Southeastern
University. He also gives entertaining talks on Einstein and time
travel. When not thinking about physics, Mark spends his time playing
with his grandchildren and driving his wife of 45 years crazy.
Author Links - The link for any or all
of the following...
Website: iramarkegdall.com
http://iramarkegdall.com/
(NOTE:
A new web site is currently in progress)
Twitter: @IMEgdall
https://twitter.com/IMEgdall
Facebook: TBD
Linkedin: Mark Egdall
Goodreads: Ira Mark Egdall
Amazon: TBD
Book Genre: Popular Science
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing
Release Date: February 24, 2014
Buy Link(s):
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple | Indybound
Book
Description:
Einstein Relatively
Simple brings
together for the first time an exceptionally clear explanation of
both special and general relativity. It is for people who always
wanted to understand Einstein's ideas but never thought it
possible.
Told
with humor, enthusiasm, and rare clarity, this entertaining book
reveals how a former high school drop-out revolutionized our concepts
of space and time. From E=mc2 and everyday time travel to
black holes and the big bang, the book takes us all, regardless of
any scientific background, on a mindboggling journey through the
depths of Einstein's universe.
Along the way, we track
Einstein through the perils and triumphs of his life - follow his
thinking,
his logic, and his
insights - and chronicle the audacity, imagination, and sheer
genius of the man
recognized
as the greatest scientist of the modern era.
Excerpt:
Prologue
All knowledge
begins in wonder.
Aristotle
In June of 1905, former
high-school drop-out and lowly patent clerk
Albert Einstein
published a paper in the German Annals of Physics
which revolutionized our
understanding of space and time. What came to
be known as the theory
of special relativity predicted a strange new universe
where time slows and
space shrinks with motion.
In that same
journal, Einstein proposed light comes in discreet packets
of energy we now call
photons. Along with Max Planck's work, this
insight sparked the
quantum revolution. This in turn set off the greatest
technological revolution
in human history - enabling the invention of
television, transistors,
electronic digital computers, cell phones, digital
cameras, lasers, the
electron microscope, atomic clocks, MRI, sonograms,
and many more modern-day
devices.
Einstein's
follow-up article in September of 1905 proposed that mass
and energy are
equivalent. His famous equation, E = mc2,
came to solve
one of the great
mysteries of modern science - how the Sun and stars
shine. Some four decades
later, Einstein's breakthrough ushered in the
atomic age.
In December of
1915, Albert Einstein - now Professor of Theoretical
Physics at the
University of Berlin - surpassed his already staggering
accomplishments. In the
midst of the turmoil and hardships of World
War I, he produced his
life's masterpiece: a new theory of gravity. His
audacious general theory
of relativity revealed a cosmos beyond our
wildest imagination. It
predicted phenomena so bizarre even Einstein
initially doubted their
existence - black holes which trap light and stop
time, wormholes which
form gravitational time machines, the expansion
of space itself, and the
birth of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago in
the ultimate cosmic
event: the Big Bang.
Not since Isaac
Newton had a single physicist attained such monumental
breakthroughs, and no
scientist since has matched his breathtaking
achievements. In
recognition, TIME magazine selected Albert Einstein
above such luminaries as
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mohandas
Gandhi, as the "Person
of the Century" - the single individual with the
most significant impact
on the 20th century.
Albert Einstein
has long since passed from this corporal world.
Yet his fame lives on.
His discoveries inspire today's generation of
physicists - providing
stepping stones to a new understanding of the
cosmos and perhaps
someday a unified theory of all physics. His brilliance,
independence of mind,
and persistence continue to be an inspiration
to us all. He remains
the iconic figure of science, whose genius
transcends the limits of
human understanding.
I wrote Einstein
Relatively Simple to tell Einstein's story - to hopefully
provide the non-expert a
clear, step-by-step explanation of how he
came to develop both
special and general relativity. My goal is a book
which is comprehensive,
fun to read, and most important, understandable
to the lay reader . . .
So come explore
how an unknown patent clerk came to develop a
new theory of time and
space, how he came to supplant the illustrious
Isaac Newton with a new
theory of gravity. Along the way we will examine
the mind of Albert
Einstein, who preferred to think in pictures rather
than words, follow his
thinking, his logic, and his insights.
To quote one of
my students; "You'll never look at the universe the
same way again!"
4 comments:
Awesome post I wish the author well on his tour!:O)
Great post and sounds like an awesome book!- Pit Crew
Thank you for hosting my book!
Thank you for sharing this post today!
Pit Crew
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