My whole educational life, I wanted to understand Einstein’s relativity and quantum physics. 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 was, and is still a chore. Whenever there’s a discussion about those two subjects, it always has to be a book. The concepts are so counter-intuitive that the only way to explain them is with the history of discovery. Einstein’s famous thought question was what would happen if he rode on a light wave. Shrodinger’s famous cat was a thought question and became a quantum joke. Here it is: 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 are true. Until somebody opens the box, the cat is both dead and alive. When the box is opened, the cat becomes one or the other. But until then, the cat is both. Absurd? Maybe, but certainly counter-intuitive.
How do we use thought questions in our lives. I remember attending a town meeting discussing local educational problems. A church pastor gave a speech and mentioned a question his son asked him. “Dad, why do I have to learn algebra?” The pastor’s answer to the audience was, “After I thought about it, I decided that there really was no good reason to learn algebra.” Can you imagine giving that answer to a town meeting about educational problems. I needed all my self-control to keep from responding, lest I make a fool of him.
Regarding Einstein and the pastor, I had a thought of my own about the use of the concept 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, speed is relative to whoever 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. Since in my car, I am not speeding, I move to throw out the speeding charges. Will my understanding of Einstein’s theory get my charges dismissed. I doubt it because to the common crowd, these non-intuitive ideas have no validity. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore them.
