Current Event 2

Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything. N.p.: Broadway, 2003. Print

I read chapter 8: Einstein’s Universe out of Bill Bryson's, A Short History of Nearly Everything. For those of you who haven't read from Bill Bryson’s book it is incredibly entertaining and super informative. In this chapter of the book, Mr.Bryson discusses a wide variety of Scientists, like Einstein, as the chapter’s title suggests. One of the most entertaining stories found in this chapter is on Max Planck, a man whom in 1875, was teetering between a career in math or in physics.  As the story goes, he was told not to to go into physics because it was believed everything had been discovered. People didn't know in contrary to that belief, that Planck would unravel the basis of previous science and set a new placemat down on which scientists could work. See the problem was at the time, people believed that in space or emptiness, there was something called luminiferous ether, a substance weightless and frictionless. It explained how light, a wave frequency, could travel through space. Waves of all kinds must need to travel in something. The Ether theory did have it’s flaws though. Specifically they came into question when a man named Michelson found a way to measure the precise speed of light. According to the Luminiferous ether theory there would be “a kind of head wind produced by moving objects as they plowed through space.(118)” This meant the speed of light would differ at different places. Michelson determined in contrary to this that the speed of light was constant at all times. Thus proving the theory to be skeptical. Planck came in just as this happened and proposed his “quantum theory.” This, “posited that energy is not a continuous thing like water but comes in individual packets, which he called quanta. (119)”  A novel concept indeed which laid the foundation for modern physics. The chapter also focuses on other things and people too, like why the great Einstein was so revolutionary. How his simple equation E=MC^2 equates to that if we were to convert an avg. person’s matter efficiently into energy, it would have the power of 30 hydrogen bombs. This equation also managed to prove solution to how a star can exist for so long. The chapter, after then continuing to go into fun facts of Einstein tells the story of Edwin Hubble and his contributions to science. Though if you want to hear about that, I recommend you read some of this book yourself. You will not regret it.

I choose this chapter because I love this book and everything I learn from it. I have already done a review on it for the last current event, and now reading more of it, I have to say the same wonderful things. Specifically though I choose this chapter because I believe it is filled with some great stories on the famous names in science, that we don't really know much about. It teaches you a lot about the realm of the scientists only a few really experience or decide to explore.

Bill Bryson I will stress again, is an awesome writer, who talks to you rather than write. It truly feels like he is sitting next to you and talking personally with you rather than being words on a piece of paper. He manages to tell jokes and even sometimes get a little off topic to help you better understand what he is talking about. This is a skill other authors should take more consideration in learning themselves.