Here is the next in my series of confounding science questions.
AUTHOR’S APOLOGY: For some reason, the superscript feature is not working in this essay, or at least not on all platforms. If you are seeing “E=mc2“, with the numeral 2 in line with the letters, please recognize that it’s supposed to be a superscript, designating an exponent. And if you have suggestions for fixing the problem, do let me know! –JB
Question 10: Why can us ordinary schmos identify with Albert Einstein?
Einstein is at the blackboard, trying to work out his world-famous equation. He’s crossed out E = mc7, he’s considering E = mc4, and he’s tried c to the power of 3 and 5 and so on. Behind him, the cleaning lady has just finished straightening the room. She says, “Now the desk looks great. Yup, everything is squared away. That’s squaaaared away!”
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/18436679694907434/
I won’t burden Gary Larson, who penned that cartoon, with excessive superlatives. Today’s topic is Einstein, which means I should not loosely toss around words like genius. But Larson’s cartoon is fantastic and insightful for all sorts of reasons.
Not many scientists have made their way into the popular consciousness, but Einstein managed the trifecta of tremendous accomplishment, wide renown, and an engaging persona. The cartoon would not have worked with any scientist, let alone twentieth-century physicist, such as Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, or Erwin Schrodinger. Only Einstein has a recognizable face and an equation to go with it.
The cartoon raises the question: What inspired Einstein? Or if you prefer: What inspires genius? Maybe it’s the cleaning lady, but who knows?
The people at the Nobel Prize seem to think that Einstein’s inspiration came from physics itself, along with heavy doses of grunt work. From their one-page biography:
“Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal.”
I don’t quite buy this analysis. I find it a stretch to think that Einstein gave birth to modern physics by following the same kind of determination and strategies that the rest of us use to…oh, I dunno…assemble IKEA furniture. Or solve the Sunday crossword puzzle. Or parallel park.[1]
The power and beauty of Einstein’s equation lies in its simplicity. Choose other equations in modern physics, such as Maxwell’s equations for the propagation of light, and you’ll find a gobbledygook mixture of upside-down triangles, bent d’s, Greek graffiti, and other funky mathematical symbols that could legitimately induce a headache. For Chrissake, I studied math and physics at Stanford University, albeit a long time ago. Today I would struggle even to type this shit, let alone pick it apart.
But E = mc2, us ordinary schmos at least stand a chance with this one; we at least feel capable of reading the blackboard. Look, only three letters! The number 2 as an exponent, which means squared. I know what a square is! We can believe, or carry the hope, that something fundamental about the Universe is relatively easy to understand.
In my official capacity as science boy, I have a tool or two that I can apply to this part of the essay. I can tell you that E is for energy, m is for mass, and c is the speed of light in a vacuum, which is a constant. The premise of the equation is that mass and energy can convert into each other, and c2 is the constant of proportionality. Because c2 is a really, really big number[2], this means that a little itty-bitty piece of mass, like a shaving off a proton or something, can change into some absurdly huge amount of energy, like the explosion of an atomic bomb.
Let me add that the change from mass to energy occurs constantly in the Sun and other stars during the process of nuclear fusion. This is why the Sun consistently releases enormous amounts of energy into space, a small fraction of which reaches Earth and makes life here possible. Today, scientists are investigating nuclear fusion as an energy source for electricity. The research is promising.
Once again, the equation is E = mc2, and I think the mystery lies in the last part.
Why is the constant c2, and not c alone, or c to another power, as Gary Larson cheekily proposed? A simple answer is that only c2 makes the units come out right. The official unit of mass is the kilogram (kg).[3] The unit for the speed of light—or any other speed you care to name—is meters per second (m/s). Put them together, and you’ll find the combined unit for mc2 to be kg(m2/s2)—which happens to be a joule, the unit of energy. These are the same joules of energy that you get from a toy car down a ramp, a rock perched at the top of a cliff, or any other example of energy that you might read about in your science textbook, middle school on up.
Still, the underlying question remains: What does the speed of light have to with mass and energy? I can wrap my head around the idea that a little tiny particle is the same as a huge amount of energy. I can imagine a very tiny ice skater twirling around in a tight circle. As she goes faster and faster—and I mean really fast—she eventually stops being an ice skater and instead is just energy. I can imagine this kind of change, whether or not it is utter bunk. But I can’t imagine what the speed of light has to do with it.
Einstein figured it out. The equation is a consequence of his theory of special relativity, which states that the speed of light is the same for all observers, regardless of their relative motion. I’ve listened to detailed explanations from true experts, presenting their topics in engaging YouTube videos. They describe the speed of causality, the fastest speed that information may travel across the Universe, and that light travels at that speed because it is a massless particle. But here is where I get off the train. Sorry, I can’t be bothered any further. I’m off to dinner at a Thai restaurant, followed by a good night’s sleep at the Hilton Garden Inn.
I don’t know if Einstein ever ate Thai food, although one can imagine that he tried Chinese at some point.[4] I can promise you that Einstein never stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn because they didn’t exist in his day. He did stay at hotels, though, some really snazzy.[5]
Question 11: Why is science so difficult?
We all can propose many answers to this question. One reason is that there is a lot of science, and the field keeps expanding every day.[6] Another reason is that scientists speak their own language, and they use everyday language (like English) in slightly different ways than the rest of us do.
But ultimately, I think science is difficult because human understanding maps imperfectly—and sometimes poorly, or not at all—onto the actual world and/or Universe that surrounds us. The goal of science is to find order within that world-Universe, and to build explanations and to make useful predictions. People sometimes forget that last part. You can look to God and religion to explain the weather, but you’re not going to get tomorrow’s forecast.
We’re outstandingly good at predicting events within our personal experience and mindsets. For example, let’s say you are heading to Minneapolis, Minnesota, for a convention this November.[7] And let’s say that you’ve never been to this city before.[8] Without much worry, you likely will entertain certain expectations and predictions about your destination that, in fact, will hold true. You can expect to find meetings at a convention center, a room with bed and bathroom at a hotel, meals at restaurants, cars and buses running along city streets. Even more generally, you can expect that gravity will pull objects downward, the Sun will rise in the east and appear to move westward across the sky, and that an array of stars will be revealed at night unless blocked by clouds or dimmed by city lights. That’s your experience in the part of the world-universe where you live, so you predict it’s the same everywhere.
Except it isn’t. Visit a black hole, for example, and none of the above predictions hold true. In such a place, not even time and space work as we expect them to, nevermind ordering room service or catching an Uber.
Scale down to the cellular level, and the rules are also confoundingly bizarre. Chemical reactions, including the activities of enzymes, happen at dizzyingly fast rates, not that dizziness is a sensible concept within a cell. Diagrams in biology make the cell appear like a well-organized factory, but imagine the cytoplasm being spun by a blender. Chemicals are whizzing around, crashing into each other, tipping the furniture, staining the carpet—it’s amazing that anything gets done. Which it does, with extreme efficiency.
Shrink even further into the heart of the atom, where protons and neutrons are made of even smaller, odder particles with names like baryons, quarks, leptons, bosons, and other subdivisions. I don’t know why one of them is called the strange quark; they all seem strange enough to me.
According to an idea called quantum entanglement, two entangled particles will share properties even when separated by any distance, such as Earth’s diameter. Paint one of these particles purple, and its partner instantly becomes purple as well. Which seems to be channeling a joke by Woody Allen.[9]
My point, which I’ve made before, is that nature is bonkers. Science is the study of nature, so it stands to reason that science is bonkers as well.
Question 12: Does anyone watch Woody Allen movies anymore?
I had written this question in the footnotes, and then decided to move it here, the main body of the essay.
Woody, with whom I really should not presume a first name basis, is now 89 years old. His last movie, “Coup de Chance”, was released in a few theaters in April, 2024. Some Internet sites suggest that he is open to making another film.
I haven’t watched a Woody Allen movie in maybe about 20 years. And I used to find them so important, so personal, so a part of my outlook on life. I don’t feel that way any longer, and it’s difficult to consider the reasons why. Those reasons may stem from Woody’s convoluted personal life and the various accusations against him, some of which I think are true, and some of which seem reflected on screen.
I don’t know. I can’t explain either Albert Einstein or Woody Allen. That failure may make for a disappointing ending to this post, but that’s how the dice rolls, baby, which conjures images of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., whom I might write about next time.
[1] I remain very proud of an IKEA television stand that I assembled for my grandfather. He died in 2003, so this assembly occurred more than 20 years ago, but it remains a highlight of my accomplishments in carpentry, if that’s the right category. You may conclude, correctly, that I’m not much of a carpenter.
Truth be told, now that I think about this event, the supplier of the television stand was not IKEA, but Circuit City, a company now out of business. But I’m sticking with IKEA because it makes a better story. I’m not writing a school textbook or a paper for an academic journal, this is MY BLOG! I’m taking license to revise personal stories at will! Bwah, hahahha, twirl the handlebar mustache.
I am skilled at solving crossword puzzles, or at least those from the New York Times. If the clue is “Mason’s man”, and the answer is four letters, I know right away the answer is “Erle”, for Erle Stanley Gardner, the guy who wrote the Perry Mason stories.
When I lived in Manhattan and owned a car there, I got very good at parallel parking. Thank you very much.
[2] Roughly, in units of m2/s2, the value of c2 is 9 x 10^16, which in standard form is written as the number 9 followed by 16 zeros. Like I said, really big.
[3] I’m using SI units, which is the convention in science. Doesn’t matter, though. The equation works with any consistent system of units you choose.
[4] Sure enough, we have an Internet page devoted to Einstein’s favorite foods and dining habits. Apparently he was fond of Italian cuisine at its most basic, such as spaghetti and macaroni. He also liked strawberries.
https://einstein-website.de/en/favorite-foods/
[5] Here is a webpage about Einstein’s visit to a hotel in Newark, New Jersey. The page is sponsored by the hotel itself, which is still in business.
https://www.rthotel.com/about/history/einstein/
[6] Not unlike the Universe itself.
[7] It’s NSTA, the National Science Teachers Association. I’ll be there!
[8] Not true for me. It’s my home town.
[9] Here is the actual joke from Woody: “…two brothers on opposite parts of the globe, one of whom took a bath while the other suddenly got clean.” He wrote this line over fifty years ago, and incredibly, science has caught up to it.
