Einstein Explained
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Loading ...Old Mr. Rosenberg said to his physicist son, “Tell me something. Everyone says Albert Einstein was one of the greatest minds in the world. But what did he do?
“Among other things, Papa,” said his son, “he worked out the theory of relativity.”
“And what is that?”
Rosenberg’s son hesitated, then said, “Well, Papa, without going into detail, it’s a way of working out a theory of the universe by beginning with the assumption that some matters we have always considered to be absolute are really relative.”
“I don’t understand. What’s absolute? What’s relative?”
“It’s hard to explain, but let me give you an example. Time is time, isn’t it? An hour of time is an hour of time, no matter what. Right?
“Right.”
“Yet under certain conditions, that’s not so. To use an example that will give you an idea of what I mean, you will agree that if you spend an hour playing pinochle with your friends, it seems like a minute, but if you sit on a cake of ice for a minute, it seems like an hour.”
Old Rosenberg stared at his son and muttered softly, “An hour playing pinochle is like a minute; a minute on a cake of ice is like an hour.” Then he said, “One more thing—is it from nonsense like this that Einstein made a living?”