My whole educational life, I wanted to understand Einstein’s relativity and quantum physics. Not to know them like my life depended on it but as something to think about. I never had the time because my education always interfered – a common sarcastic complaint. Trying to understand Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg, Shrodinger and all those guys is a chore. Whenever there’s a discussion about those two subjects, it always has to be a book, and it has to start at the beginning. The concepts are so counter-intuitive that the only way to explain them is with the history of discovery. Einstein’s famous thought was envisioning himself riding on a light wave. Shrodinger’s cat was a quantum joke. There’s a cat in a box being subjected to a probability of random radiation poisoning. “Is the cat dead or alive,” Shrodinger asks. His answer to prove a point was both. That is, until somebody opens the box. Then the cat has to become one or the other. But until then, the cat is both. Absurd? No, but counter-intuitive, yes.
But how do we use thought questions in our lives. I remember attending a town meeting relating to local educational problems. A pastor gave a speech answering the question his son asked him. “Dad, why do I have to learn algebra?” After thinking about it, the pastor came up with the answer you wouldn’t think of at an education related meeting. “Yes, why?” he asked himself. “There really is no good reason. I have no answer for him.” I needed all my self-control to keep my mouth shut at the risk of hurling insults at him.
Relative to Einstein and the pastor, I had a thought of my own about the use of relativity in everyday life. Suppose I got a speeding ticket and decided to appear in court and fight it. “Your Honor, consider this. According to Einstein, speeding is relative to who is watching and from where. In my car, I am not speeding. Relative to my car, I am really not moving at all. To the cop on the side of the highway watching me, I am speeding relative to his position. But where in the traffic law does it say that speeding has to be measured relative to a stationary policeman. His position is arbitrary. In my car, I am not speeding. Therefore, I move to throw out the speeding charges. My question is whether my understanding of Einstein’s theory will get my charges dismissed. Probably not, because to the common crowd, these non-intuitive ideas have no validity. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore them.
#Musings #thought provoking #brainspill
