In 1905 Albert Einstein published a landmark paper concerning the properties of space and time. The theory that he introduced, the so-called theory of special relativity, forced a complete reformulation of our conceptions of these two fundamental structures. To get a sense of the far-reaching consequences of this theory it is instructive to look at an example. Imagine driving in a car at 100km/h alongside another car (say a Porsche) that is also driving at 100km/h (the velocities of each car of course being in reference to the road). If you looked out the window at the Porsche then it…
The Science Creative Quarterly
By Nahid Jetha
Nahid Jetha is a graduate student in Engineering Physics, who plans on taking over the world after watching one too many episodes of Pinky and the Brain. When not scheming about this, he is studying the energies associated with beta-sheet melting and annealing in the Prion protein at the single molecule level, and hopes that doing this will somehow land him a lead role in the hit soap opera “All My Children”. Until that comes to fruition however, he’ll continue with graduate school and continue going to the Red Room (or Lotus) almost every Saturday.