Albert Einstein was a physicist, born in Wurttemberg, Germany in 1879. Though the Einstein family was Jewish, Albert was educated in Catholic schools. Early on, he struggled with his speech, and being able to put sentences together in the correct way. What did not help was that the family moved around quite frequently, moving across Germany, and then abroad to Italy and Switzerland. Despite his struggles, he became an excellent student and showed an early interest in the areas of science and mathematics.

Einstein’s drive came from trying to find the problems that arose in modern physics of the time, and building on the theories of his contemporaries in order to develop new theories of his own. He was particularly troubled by Newtonian mechanics, and began developing the theory of relativity, among others, and delved into the world of quantum mechanics and physics.

In 1905, Albert Einstein arrived at his famous equation of E=mc^2 while he was doing extensive work on relativity. The most basic interpretation of this equation is defined simply as “energy equals mass times the speed of light squared,” also known as the mass-energy equivalence equation (Tyson 2005). His main goal was to prove that mass can be defined by the energy that it produces, and everything that has mass subsequently has a level of energy.

In this equation, the terms are defined accordingly: ‘E’ is the energy equivalent to mass, measured in joules; ‘m’ is the mass, measured in kilograms; the ‘c’ represents the speed of light, but actually stands for the Latin word for speed, which is celeritas, yet actually measured in meters per second. On the surface, this equation may be puzzling, because we are to believe that, under the right conditions, matter is converted into energy, and vice versa. This is because an object has various forms of energy, including potential and kinetic energies.

Mass has to be converted to energy, and this can be done in a variety of ways. An example of this would be a billiard ball that is heated. It will absorb the heat energy, and according to its properties, it will expand. The heat expansion thus becomes mass as a direct result of energy conversion (Flores 2005). Thus, it is not so much a question of the object, but the changing of the object that makes it equivalent to energy. Furthermore, it is important that we not think of mass as a means of substance necessarily. Yes, we are talking about weight, but it is not necessarily about the quantity, and more about the space something is occupying.

All other considerations aside, an object at rest can still have energy, but it is stored, and must be set in motion in order to hold true to the mass-equivalence theory. So energy, while still valid to the object at rest, is null and void without the element of action. But there is still the question of having to square the speed of light in order to complete the equation. This is because “when something is moving four times as fast as something else, it doesn't have four times the energy but rather 16 times the energy” (Tyson 2005). The number has to take into account this movement, but nonetheless, yields a number of epic proportions. Even something miniscule like a pebble can yield a great deal of activity. This equation encompasses every bit of matter, tall and small, and everything in between.

Einstein’s theory is still used to this day, because many advanced technologies call for it. Anything that uses radiation, or radioactive decay of a substance, is a direct result of this theory, and is used to measure how we are able to view the human body. The illumination would be the energy, and something like a PET (positron emission tomography) scan will specifically pinpoint the radiation emission, allowing the doctors to see the progression of a disease. Also, variations of Einstein’s equation have also been used to accommodate momentum, which shows “how light works, and how energy and light can be transferred and transformed from one place to another” (Tyson 2005).

Regardless of its comprehension by the masses, Albert Einstein’s equation, E=mc^2 still even perplexes physicists and mathematicians. However, its basic principle allows them the chance to see just how things work and change.














References
Flores, F. (2005). Interpretations of Einstein’s equation E=mc^2. International Studies
in the Philosophy of Science, 19(3), 245-260. Retrieved November 30, 2007 from
Academic Search Premier.
Tyson, P. (2005). Einstein’s big idea: the legacy of E=mc^2. Nova: Science
Programming On-Air and Online. PBS Online. Retrieved November 30, 2007
from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/legacy.html.