For a lighter take on relativity....

[Nugatory]

This piece was published in 1921, so five years after Einstein wrote "Relativity: The Special and the General Theory" for a general audience.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...opy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

 

[.Scott]

Very good. So GR used its first dibs on Alice in Wonderland by claiming the Mad Hatter. Then about 90 years later QM staked its claim to the Cheshire Cat.

 

[Ibix]

That's a rather odd piece of writing. It kind of reads like someone trying to say relativity is daft because something something literary reference. But then it cites the anomalous precession of Mercury and Eddington's eclipse observations and says in passing "What will happen when we come into knowledge of the control of sub-atomic energy? for these small fry move with terrific velocities. Shall we soon be able to release this energy, and later to harness it?" Which is a remarkable insight for 1921.

 

[.Scott]

That's a rather odd piece of writing.

In college, I took a 19th century Literature course (strictly because a literature course was "required").
What became very evident to me, very quickly was that this literature was written for an audience that, if not "home bound", was mostly "town-bound" - and without TV or radio (or even the internet ). The average reader spent hours reading newspapers and literature. Homes commonly had bookshelves filled with decades of back-issues of everything (especially Reader's Digest) and basements with old news papers all in chronological order.

This Atlantic article is "early 20th century" (before radio broadcasting was popular). There was huge consumer demand for literature during this period. And successful writers and publishers were experts at addressing this market.
That intended audience no longer exists.

So, if that article comes across as "odd", bear in mind that you've just walked into someone else's conversation and you're never going to fully catch the context.

 

[Histspec]

"What will happen when we come into knowledge of the control of sub-atomic energy? for these small fry move with terrific velocities. Shall we soon be able to release this energy, and later to harness it?" Which is a remarkable insight for 1921.

This came after Rutherford in 1919 managed to make the first observation of an induced nuclear reaction, which was big news in the papers ("splitting the atom" or "Atomzertrümmerung"). For instance, the German newspaper Berliner Tageblatt devoted an article on 25 July 1920, including an expert opinion of Einstein himself, who said “it cannot be excluded that substantial quantities of energy can be released” and that “new energy sources of immense effectiveness” might be obtained, even though it’s hard to make predictions. At the end, Einstein even hinted at the possibility of some kind of chain reaction, because the rays freed by the alpha particles might themselves give rise to the same actions.