January 21, 2019 Monday
Bedtime Story "
Was Einstein Right: putting general relativity to test"
Last night I had ended the bedtime story
stating that experiments to falsify general relativity are divided into four
categories.
These four categories contain the following
experiments.
I shall refrain from describing each of
them since each is worth a story in itself.
Secondly, the primary goal of today’s
bedtime story is to impress upon you apes the kind of scrutiny that Einstein’s
theory is subjected to even today.
When writing about tonight’s bedtime story
I was reminded of the book “Was Einstein right: putting general relativity to
the test” (1986) written by Canadian mathematical physicist Clifford Martin
Will.
Clifford Will is currently a faculty
professor at the Physics Department that includes the Institute for Fundamental
Theory and Institute for High Energy Physics and Astrophysics (IHEPA) at the
University of Florida in the city of Gainesville.
I remember reading it in the “Biblioteka
imeni Maxim Gorkava” or Maxim Gorky Volgograd Regional Universal Research
Library where there was a small “Foreign Section” that housed precious English
books that I so desired to read.
Maxim Gorky whose true name is Alexei
Maximovich Peshkov is a well known Soviet writer and a close associate of Anton
Chekov and Vladimir Lenin who finally ended up landing on the wrong side of
Stalin (as did most).
Since we were not allowed to borrow books
home from that section (don’t recall the reason) I was forced to read the book
in the library over a few Sundays.
I actually enjoyed it since it kept me away
from other Hindus and apes in general.
It was the first time that it dawned upon
me that the preposterous propositions of the theory were actually true and have
been tested experimentally to a high degree of accuracy.
Remember, it was mid 90s and lot more
serious work on it has taken place since then.
A. Classical tests of general relativity
(proposed by Einstein himself)
(1) The perihelion precession of Mercury’s
orbit
(2) The deflection of light by the Sun
(3) The gravitational redshift of light
B. Modern Tests
(1) Post-Newtonian tests of gravity – this
needs elaboration but for time being I will not go into it
(2) Gravitational lensing – gravitational
deflecting of light
(3) Light delay time travel testing – also
known as Shapiro delay and one of the four classic solar-system tests for
general relativity
(4) The equivalence principle – based on
the equivalence of gravitational and equivalence mass
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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