Abraham Pais, Einstein’s colleague and scientific biographer quotes Einstein: “I was sitting in a chair in the patent office in Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me: ‘If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight.’ I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation.”
Einstein called this “the happiest thought of my life.”
A theory of gravitation? Didn’t Einstein know that Newton had already been there? Done that? Two centuries ago? Makes you wonder whose grandma was baking brownies for the Nobel Prize board in 1921when Einstein won that big cheese prize in Physics.
As I finish the last page of the Idiot’s Guide to Pit Dwelling, I can’t help but feeling that I am finally on solid idiot-grounding as far as my understanding of pit dwelling goes. My recent swallowing of idiot information makes me wonder if maybe I am now capable of thinking like Einstein, able to create my own “happy thought.” It’s worth a try.
First attempt: If a person sits in a pit long enough she will not feel her own legs or butt or weight.
Not so good. I try again.
Second attempt: If a person trips in a pit enough times she will not experience the feeling of falling because she is already so low.
Not bad. But it doesn’t do anything for the “happy” part.
Then it hit me. Maybe Einstein meant something altogether different with his theory of gravitation. Perhaps he meant . . . if even a single moment can exist in which gravity can be transformed away, as if to disappear, then that means that gravity as a force doesn’t really exist. That’s it! Gravity doesn’t exist. I wonder what grandma put in those brownies.
Oddly enough, that’s exactly what he meant: gravity as Newton explained it (a force that is pulling toward the center of the earth) doesn’t exist. It took a few more years, but Einstein took this theory of gravitation and evolved it into the principle of equivalency which in turn forms the basis for Einstein’s general theory of relativity. All of which shows, mathematically, that gravity is not a force. In order to keep things straight, Einstein renamed the force that we feel pulling us down when we fall: old name=gravity, new name=tidal forces.
Phew . . . what a happy thought!
Third attempt: If gravity, as Newton saw it, doesn’t exist then a person can fall freely out of a pit and onto solid ground, regardless of her weight.
Much better. Does anyone have Einstein’s grandma’s brownie recipe?
