Question: Who is your favourite science communicator?

Edward Guy answered on 1 Feb 2024:

Albert Einstein. He communicated highly complex and groundbreaking concepts, and challenged existing scientific theories, through a simple series of images known as his ‘thought experiments’. Einstein had a gift for communicating ideas without having to describe them with words… he communicated through pictures (which is how our brains work best when we are trying to be creative) rather than relying on words.

Here’s some of the ways he thought about the theory of relativity.

A man is inside a box in a weightless environment. Someone pulls on a rope attached to the box and as the box starts moving, the man is pressed against the inside of the box and experiences ‘gravity’ where there is none because he is moving. Another man falls from a ladder and while in freefall tries to drop an apple but it doesn’t fall relative to him. So, he experiences a gravity-free environment where there is gravity… because he is moving too!

A man on a train travelling close to the speed of light passes another man standing on the platform. At that exact moment 2 trees (one is 100 metres behind the train and one is 100 meters ahead) are struck simultaneously by lightning. The man on the platform sees two simultaneous flashes of light but the man on the train sees the flash behind later because the light has to catch him up. Which man’s observation (the stationary one or the moving one) is accurate? Both, of course, so how can two different observations for the same event be explained?

These are just a few examples. His thought experiments were so amazing that he even came up with one that considered ‘quantum entanglement’ before anyone had even proposed it as a theory!