Biography of Albert Einstein

Our education system mainly focuses on the cognitive domain and only if they get time they add the psychomotor domain in the name of practical's.

The domain which we never give importance to is affective domain. On the affective domain we have the pictures of great scientists that's it. Knowing about their past and how they became such a great personality will inculcate the values in them.

In this blog I will discuss the life of Albert Einstein and things to be be learnt from him.

      

·       Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the kingdom of Wurttemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879.

 

·       His parents were Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer, and Pauline Koch. In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where Einstein’s father and his uncle Jakob founded a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current.

 

·       Albert attended a catholic elementary school in Munich, from the age of 5, for three years. At the age of 8, he was transferred to the Luitpold Gymnasium where he received advanced primary and secondary school education until he left the German Empire seven years later.

 

·       In 1894, Hermann and Jakob’s company faced loss which forced the sale of the Munich factory. In the search of business, the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and a few months later to Pavia.

 

·       When the family moved to Pavia, Einstein, then 15, stayed in Munich to finish his studies at the luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the school’s regimen and teaching method.

 

·       At the end of December 1894, he travelled to Italy to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using doctors note.

 

·       Einstein always excelled at maths and physics from a young age, reaching a mathematics level years ahead to his peers. The twelve-year-old Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry over a single summer.

 

·       Einstein also independently discovered his own original proof of the Pythagorean theorem at age 12.

 

·       His passion for geometry and algebra led to a twelve-year-old to become convinced that nature can be understood as “mathematic structure”

·       In 1895, at the age of 16, Einstein took the entrance examination for the Swiss federal polytechnic Zurich. he failed to reach he required standard in the general paper of examination, but obtained exceptional grades in physics and mathematics.

·       But after one year of preparation, he passed the entrance exam and enrolled in the 4-year mathematics and physics teaching diploma program in Zurich polytechnic.

·       After graduating in 1900, Einstein spend almost two frustrating years searching for a teacher post. He acquired Swiss citizenship in February 1901, but was not conscripted for medical reasons.

·       Finally secured a job in Bern at the federal office for the intellectual property, the patent office, as a clerk.

·       On 30 April 1905, Einstein completed his thesis, with Alfred Kleiner, professor of experimental physics. As a result, Einstein was awarded a phd by the university of Zurich, with his dissertation “ A new determination of molecular dimensions”.

·       In that same year, which has been called Einstein’s miracle year, he published four ground breaking papers, on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy, which were to bring him to the notice of academic world, at the age of 26.

·       After that he worked as professor at various university around the world.

·       Based on calculations Einstein made in 1911, about new theory of general relativity, light from another star should be bent by the sun’s gravity, in 1919 the prediction was confirmed by sir Arthur Eddington during the solar eclipse of 29 may 1919.

·       Those observation were published in the international media, making Einstein world famous. On 7 November 1919, the leading British newspaper The Times printed a banner headline thar read. “Revolution in science- new theory of universe- Newtonian ideas overthrown”.

·       In 1922, he was awarded the 1921 Nobel prize in Physics “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”.

·       Dew to condition of Jews in German in 1933, he arrived at the decision to remain permanently in the United States.

As a student what we can inculcate in our nature by knowing the life of Albert Einstein. 

    ·       No fear of failure

Max Planck once said to Einstein, if you want to work on gravity, there are two problems

(1)  You can’t be successful, it’s too hard

(2)  Even if you get success, no one will believe you

So, in our life their will many instances where there will be fear of failure but we should do that thing by thinking that we will learn something. If anyone wants to master a task, he should have all possible wrong results.

 

·       Education is not about learning facts

Einstein once said why should I waste my mind in learning something that can be stored. He said this line even when computers were not fully developed.

We should train our mind to think, not for rote learning. All the subjects that are introduced should we linked with the experience of learner and teacher should never encourage students in rote learning.

 

·       True sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination

Einstein once said “I wanted to know god’s thoughts in a mathematical way”. He wanted an equation not more than 1 inch long that holds all laws of universe.

So, imagination allows us to discover something new. We imagine something that is abstract thinking but then convert that thinking to reality and then gain knowledge from that should be steps in learning.

 

·       There is no minimum age to develop scientific thinking

Einstein published four ground breaking papers, on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy at the age of 26.

Teacher should encourage children to develop their own models and should ask them to observe data, analysis, hypothesis and asking them to find different conclusions over that. By this they will develop scientific thinking themselves. Teachers should also give projects and assignment in such a way that help them to improve them to gain this skill.

 

·       No subject should be taught in isolation

In Photoelectric effect Einstein talked about smallest molecule that is atom, that thing also helped in several aspects related to chemistry.

So, every subject is interrelated too other. So, if you have some understanding related to a topic that doesn’t mean that it is constraint to that subject only, the application of that can help you to understand another subject in a better way.

 

·       Anything which happen around us, we should always think and should question ourself why it is happening?

Once Einstein’s father gave him compass at the age of 6, then he used to sit night after night thinking why needle faces north?

Every child has some schema in them but if anything doesn’t fall under their schema the disequilibrium stage occurs, after that there should be accommodation. That means child should have that urge to know new things and he should not believe blindly on things which happens in near surroundings.

   ·       Let child construct the knowledge by the experiences he/she have

Einstein loved Physics and Mathematics subject, just because he experiences many things which surrounds him is just mere application of the subject.

Child will start running from the subject if he can’t relate that subject to the real life. Any child who is very good in a particular subject shows he has that zeal to learn but he finds some difficulty in other subject shows that subject hasn’t been put in interesting way in front of student.

 

   ·       Ideal day dreams and science fiction should be encouraged in child

Einstein had a dream of riding on light.

Day dreaming is something that is impossible to achieve in reality. But it explores one’s imagination. As we can see that it is impossible to travel on light but this science fiction motivated Einstein to give theory on time travel.

This theory says if we travel with the speed of light the time will become slow for you. By this way we can travel to future.

 ·       Child should not be affected by what others think of him

All the teachers who had taught Einstein believes that he is dumb, just because question asked by him seems to be useless for them.

Even his father thinks that he can’t do anything in his future. So, by this I understand that we should listen to our elders but till the time they are motivating us not in times when they discourage you.