Can anyone explain the Theory of relativity by Albert Einstein in simple english?

Question

"
Which theory?
Einstein gave us the Special Theory of Relativity and
the General Theory of Relativity. "

Both please.

bty96310 - I dont fully understand that comment. Can anyone break it down to its relevent point?

Answer 1

E=MC2*
The E stands for energy.
The M stands for mass.
The C2* stands for the speed of light squared or the speed of light multiplied by itself.

In other words energy is mass times the speed of light squared.

*the 2 is supposed to be small.

Answer 2

Which theory?
Einstein gave us the Special Theory of Relativity and
the General Theory of Relativity.

Answer 3

Albert Einstein's theory of relativity:

E = M C2(Squared not x2)
Energy = Mass x The speed of light in a vacuum
squared
Basically Einstein was on a fast train, he noticed his watch was SLIGHTLY different to Big Ben when he passed it, so what it means is, if you're speed is great enough the gravity will have a effect which causes time to go slightly faster but you will not notice because you're smack bang right in the middle of the effect, so in other words you'll age faster in a train than walking.

Answer 4

Someone else asked exactly this the other day, and I did my best then to provide the highlights. I'll try again for you now.

Firstly, it's important to understand that relativity is such an incredibly complicated subject, that the likes of you and me (lay people) would find it virtually impossible to comprehend entirely. But we can understand the effects it has on the universe rather than why it has those effects.

OK. As you know there are 2 theories, special and general. Special came first, and changed the way the universe and time were viewed by scientists, and general explained, amongst other things, how and why gravity exists.

Before Special Relativity, it was assumed that time was an unchanging component, that it ticked steadily onwards at the same rate and speed, regardless of the circumstances. That, if I stayed on earth and you zoomed into space in a space ship our watches would read the same time at every stage. But Einstein's famous theory showed this wasn't true.

We each of us occupy our own, individual "frame of reference", and it is impossible to know who is at rest and who is moving at any given moment. If we were both floating about in space, we couldn't know if it were me staying still, and you flying around about or vice versa. The only thing we could ever agree on is that for both of us, regardless of our movements, the speed of light flows at the same rate.

Let's say you're in a car travelling at 20 mph with your headlights on. If you chuck a ball out of the window at the rate of 10mph, then we can agree that the true velocity of that ball is 30 mph, as the car has already contributed 20mph of speed. But, weirdly, the rate at which the light from the headlights travels does not behave in the same way. It will ALWAYS travel at 186,000mps regardless of the movements of the car - you do not add on the 20mph the car is travelling. And when the car comes to a halt, it will still continue on at the same rate.

This is where it really starts getting complicated. Einstein theorised that, if the speed of light does not change, then something else must do. Basic maths show us that speed = distance covered divided by time. So, it's time that changes, but ONLY relative to an observer. The faster an object travels, the more time would appear to slow down for it, and the object will appear to shrink in the direction it is moving.

It's possible I may have lost you here (this is the moment I always tend to get a bit stuck) so try and envisage this analogy. I am sitting on a train platform, and you are on a train that is speeding through the station at a velocity close to the speed of light. As you zip past me I can look through the windows (in reality, not possible, but just suppose!) and see that the clock on the wall of the train appears to be running slower than I think it should do. The movements of the passengers would appear sluggish and slow, and if I could hear you speak your voice would sound slurred. The train itself would also appear to be shorter in length than it was before the journey started. But - and this is truly bizarre - from your perspective, nothing would seem amiss. Time would be ticking on at the same rate it always has for you and your movements would be perfectly normal. But if you looked out of the window at ME, you would see that it was MY watch running slower, MY voice that was slurred. It's all relative, hence the name.

Most people will say that relativity is E=MC 2. That's just a part of it, not the whole theory encapsulated. It shows that energy and matter are two forms of the same thing, and that the faster an object of matter travels the more energy it needs to convert in order to stay in motion. In a nutshell, even the smallest little bit of matter has the most enormous amount of energy bound up in it. You, for example, have enough energy with in you to explode with the force of 30 Hiroshima bombs.

General theory - again cutting a very long story short - shows that time and space together form a dimension called space-time. Space-time can be warped by objects of matter, only really observable with large objects like planets. A planet will cause a kind of dip in space time (bit like a cannon ball sitting on on a stretched rubber sheet) and other nearby objects will fall into that dip. This is gravity. It's not really a kind of magnetism as people suppose, but is actually an effect of the warping of space-time.

I'm sorry I've gone on at such length - but I hope I've helped you reach some kind of understanding. E-mail me if you want to ask anything!

Answer 5

Monkey Boy and Squishy gave you what is probably the best-known conclusion that can be drawn from Special Relativity, which basically said that every observer will measure the speed of light to be the same, regardless of his or her own *constant* speed and direction. What does change from observer to observer is time and distance. Einstein published this theory in 1905.

His greatest contribution to science, however, was the theory of General Relativity. GR took him ten more years to develop, mostly because the mathematics were so difficult. It extended relativity to "non-inertial" (accelerating) frames of reference, including free-fall under the influence of gravity. In fact, it was essentially a theory of gravity, in which he showed that gravity is not a force, rather a distortion of spacetime under the influence of mass. This completely revolutionized our understanding of the universe.

The existence of black holes was predicted by GR, and the Big Bang Theory was "simply" an extension of GR.

Answer 6

Einstien had 2 theories concerning relativity. First, special relativity which deals with how particles and waves behave at or near the speed of light. Central to special relativity is the idea that the speed of light is a constant and no matter what frame of reference you are in when you measure it, the value is still the speed of light. If a space ship travelling toward you at half the speed of light shines a light at you, you will see the light approach at the speed of light, not one and one half the speed of light. Strange eh? Some things that fell out of special relativity - mass increases as you get closer to the speed of light, so a spaceship would get heavier and heavier as it neared the speed of light. In fact, it could never reach the speed of light becuase as it gets heavier, it takes more and more energy to accelerate and the amount of energy needed to get that last bit of speed is infinite. So you can get close to but never reach the speed of light. This is true for objects with non-zero rest mass, light has zero rest mass. Time contracts or moves more slowly as you near the speed of light and length contracts. As you move closer to the speed of light, you get thinner in the direction of motion. This is not just an apparent shrinkage, it is real.

Einstien later expanded special realtivity to include gravity's affect on time-space. Some of the ideas that came out of this is gravity slows down time - the stronger the gravitational field you are in, the slower time goes by and the fact that mass bends or curves space.
Gravitational waves were also predicted by special relativity.

Many of Einstiens predictions have been exprerimentally proven. Scientists are still trying to prove/disprove gravitational waves. The math behind relativity is extremely complex.

Answer 7

There are much maths and poor results in general theory, so don’t jam your head with this brain twister.
The special theory states that any moving object in any coordinate system cannot exceed the speed of light c=300000km/s and could be understood, if you consider Minkowsky space – a very nifty and perceivable means. You must know that sqrt(-1)=i and easily manipulate with imaginary numbers. more datails?

Answer 8

(1) mass increases with speed and becomes infinite at the speed fo light
(2) time passes more slowly as the speed of light is approached
(3) light or photons are discreet packages of energy - this may be attributable to Niels Bohr / Max Planck
(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity

Answer 9

The simple answer? He reckoned that the faster you went, the heavier you got.

His theory is debunked a little by all the fat people out there, let's face it - they're not that fast!

Answer 10

E=mc2 Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared. The heavier the object the greater its potential energy. As speed increases so does energy. As the speed of light is constant the energy divided by its mass is always constant.

Basically I have no idea.