Splash Biography

Have you ever wondered why this Einstein guy is a big deal? In this class we will learn about his masterpiece, the General Theory of Relativity. We will cover one of the most famous, if not the famous, formula in science: E=mc2. We will talk about how time and space are not what everyday experience suggests they are. We will learn how they can stretch, bend and twist in different ways that cause weird phenomena that we never see in daily life, such as time dilation, length contraction, gravitational lensing. We will also learn how Einstein figured this all out using his famous thought experiments.

Our universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago. We now call it "The Big Bang". But it was not just "big", it was "everywhere". Moreover, it was not just a "bang", it was a "stretch". Although "The Everywhere Stretch" is not a catchy name for it. In this class, we will read the biography for our universe. We will start from its birth, then tell the story of how it evolved into the universe in which we live and love. (The whole universe was orange at some point in its evolution!) Then we will cover how our universe will look like in the distant future (not thousands, not millions, but billions of years later). Eventually we will learn about how it will die, this time not with a bang but with a whimper.

Our universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago. We now call it "The Big Bang". But it was not just "big", it was "everywhere". Moreover, it was not just a "bang", it was a "stretch". Although "The Everywhere Stretch" is not a catchy name for it. In this class, we will read the biography for our universe. We will start from its birth, then tell the story of how it evolved into the universe in which we live and love. (The whole universe was orange at some point in its evolution!) Then we will cover how our universe will look like in the distant future (not thousands, not millions, but billions of years later). Eventually we will learn about how it will die, this time not with a bang but with a whimper.

"Is the Moon falling?" was the key question Isaac Newton asked when he was a young scholar at Cambridge University. It opened up the way of thinking that enabled him to come up with his theory of gravity. If the Earth is pulling on nearby objects and causing them to fall, it should also pull the Moon and cause it to fall. Using Newtonian Theory of Gravity, we were able to explain the motion of stars, planets, nebulae and countless other celestial objects (We went to the Moon using only Newtonian Gravity!). It was so powerful that we did not need to come up with a better theory until 1915. However, it left a key part unanswered, how does gravity exert its force? Before answering that one, another key question was asked at the dawn of the new century by Albert Einstein, "Does light fall?". In this class we will follow the same thought path that Einstein did as he constructed the General Theory of Relativity, crown jewel of Classical Physics. We will learn the basics of one of the most mathematically elegant theories in Physics (Trust me, there are a lot of ugly ones). We will discover the true nature of space and time (it may not be "the answer to life the universe and everything", but it is the next best thing). Spoiler alert: Yes! Light does fall.