num_pages: 140
description: SCENE: A street car in uniform movement of translation in any direction.TIME: The present.The Reader: (looking over the top of a morning paper) Here's something queer -a whole page taken with a new discovery in physics- Eclipse Observations Confirm Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Anything about it in your paper?The author: Yes. Heres a cartoon on it by Mc-Cutcheon.The Reader: Must be something to it then. Mc-Cutcheon always knows whats news.(Reads on with audible fragments)Most sensational discovery in the history of science - Greatest achievement of the human intellect--Upsets Galileo Newton and Euclid--Revolution in philosophy and theology. It looks as though I ought to know something about this doesn't it?The Author: I think you will have to sometime. And you might as well do it now and get it over with.The Reader: (running down the column and hitting the high spots) Parallel lines meet--a man moving with the speed of light never grows old--gravitation due to a warp in space--length of a measuring stick depends upon direction of its motion--mass is latent energy--time as a fourth dimension-- why the man is crazy isn't he.The Author: Well definitions of insanity are so uncertain that it is not safe to say who is crazy. But it seems there's method in his madness-- otherwise how could he have hit upon the exact extent of the sun's attraction on light?The Reader: (picks up his paper and reads aloud with concentrated attention) Postulate I. Every law of nature which holds good with respect to a coordinate system K must also hold good for any other system K' provided that K and K' are in uniform movement of translation. Say do you know anything about this business?The Author: Well yes a little. I have followed the controversy--at a safe distance-- for a number of years.
language: English
title: Easy Lessons in Einstein: A Discussion of the More Intelligible Features of the Theory of Relativity
publisher: Kessinger Publishing, LLC