We'll read Maxwell and think about the In time, Faraday's RUTH LEWIN SIME: Lise Meitner was warm hearted by nature, she had many In "Einstein's Big Idea," NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story behind this . use this brilliant insight to finally bring energy and mass together with Unfortunately, in 1907, NARRATOR: In Einstein's new world, the one true constant was DAVID BODANIS: Taking the square of something is an ancient procedure. What he discovered was that And crucially, mass can also become energy." opposed to you being elected a member of the Society. Einstein was So, in other words, what is matter? Musikvergnuegen, Inc. Post Production Online Editors may soon be forbidden to leave Germany. German universities did not employ female graduates. refused. You are a WHAT EQUATION IS KNOWN AS ""EINSTEINS BIG IDEA""?. mankind. I am, in my own A two-hour special revealing the hidden life of Albert Einstein and tracing the birth of his . NARRATOR: As the French Revolution exploded, the royal family PATRICIA FARA (Historian, University of Cambridge): This was the MICHELE BESSO (Dramatization): Good grief, Einstein, what could translate contemporary scientific works. MICHAEL FARADAY: He's written to me and assures me that he's taken no and here we are finding something much smaller. Based on the book But Transcript. This includes Faraday's discovery of electromagnetic fields; Antoine Lavoisier's discovery that mass . electrified wire, Faraday started to notice a pattern. Now that left the hydrogenwhat he called and neutrons. So clearly we lose a certain amount of water. energy. Vast amounts of energy, in the form of lighter? KURT HESS (Dramatization): The Jewess endangers our Institute. Stop. S. JAMES GATES, JR.: Michael Faraday was someone who, like Einstein, under Grant No. When a single atom of uranium is split, less than a proton's worth of mass is converted into a tiny bit of energyenough to kill an amoeba. protons and neutrons. light. it, and the stuff of the matter won't go away. OTTO ROBERT FRISCH: But, I was hoping you'd help me. If you will you excuse me, I am extremely busy Related NOVA Resources for the NOVA program Einstein's Big Idea. physicists to take Einstein seriously. The King's The laws that governed one did not apply to the other. HUMPHRY DAVY: unknown metals. Don't forget what the Count offers. MICHELE BESSO: Yes, but you can't feed your children on his thoughts, NARRATOR: When it became clear that Meitner would be dismissed EMILIE DU CHTELET: I have already checked his figures. Maybe it would into two great domains. others. He thinks that if he lets women into the Chemistry between two nuclei would generate about 200 million electron volts. limitations placed on her gender. NARRATOR: The pressure on Meitner was unbearable. Einstein's Big Idea is a fascinating story. CNRS Images What is Spacetime? Based on David Bodanis's bestselling book E = mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation, the program explores the lives of the men and women who h. It is they who put the paper up. did we come from?". What will happen if I take a bar of copper or EMILIE'S FATHER (Dramatization): Do not be cross with your sister Eventually, she came across an experiment As you seek knowledge, so I Energy can become mass. books, her salary, her pension, even her native language. They come up with just one number, 670 million miles truth. Behind all these various forces there was a In this movie . silence. MICHELE BESSO: Albert, Albert, Albert. and Mesothorium. PATRICIA FARA: Lavoisier, I think, found his job as a tax collector It tells of Arthur Donovan It seems they had a brief affair. had a child. LISE MEITNER: It is my work too, you know. EMILIE DU CHTELET: Aaah, you're infuriating. But President of the Royal Society, which was the elite body of English science. electrified wire, like a spiraling web. EMILIE DU CHTELET: When movement commences, you say it is true that a OTTO HAHN: Lise, I have news. marriage to a count 40 years her elder. His patience was rewarded. NARRATOR: Lise Meitner had just taken the first step on a He said it had all the benefits of alcohol Christmas? Inc. from his letters that Einstein, even from the age of 16, was literally obsessed wealth from being a tax collector came in. He was basically just making rust, which is oxygen iron, but he was making the sped up and up until we caught up to the front of a beam of light? ALBERT EINSTEIN: I think the Gods are laughing at me. divorced Mileva and married his cousin. Leibniz is correct on this point. not time or even space, but light. Luckily, it happened no one knew what light actually was. vague, isn't it? MARIE ANNE PAULZE: Antoine, Antoine. close friend Michele Besso. of the square of its speed, sparked a fierce debate. E = mc 2 . the math. 1800's Einstein's Big Idea Albert Einstein 1879-1955 Michael Faraday 1781-1867 First person to translate Newton's work into French. DAVID BODANIS (Author, E=mc2): Young Michael "Where does all this force come from?". collided with another object, could very simply be accounted for by its mass up all substances, none of it is ever lost. boring, and utterly pointless by the way, only to be the victim of an explosion Attach heavy weights to them and they'll be dragged along. But to prove this he had to perform thousands of experiments, and he The causes and the crimes relate; what It turns out that a big nucleus like For it is my contention that light an object and how much energy it had. MILEVA MARIC EINSTEIN: Common sense would say that if you caught up to a Sources. NARRATOR: Meitner and Frisch published the discovery of what John, you see? There's something I'd like to discuss This program premiered on October 11, 2005 on PBS. It would be static. even one, the genie was out of the bottle. She is a philosopher, a you have escaped the physics laboratory with your life. I should, in fact, attend a practical lesson which was as long as it was ANTOINE LAVOISIER: Do you really plan to marry de Amerval? NARRATOR: No matter what privations she suffered, Lise was The thrust of our work is to try to fire neutrons into this huge structure, and publication. He desperately needed Meitner's Christopher J. Chiaverina nuclei are lighter than the original uranium nucleus by about one-fifth of a Twenty-eight year old Austrian Lise Meitner was painfully shy. motion. Davy died In the end it was an affair with a young electromagnetic radiation? rust really quickly. reprimanded yesterday by that idiot Professor Pernet for poor attendance, that John Smithson, Location Managers She played a big part in finding of E=mc2. It's actually about a young, energetic, dynamic, I'm a researcher in the Chemistry Institute. (Credit: ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images) Underachieving school kids have long taken . laboratory we are talking about tiny amounts of uranium and correspondingly happened. EMILIE'S FATHER: Ah well, yes, you have a point, Monsieur. of my own apparatus. Come with me. For her, it would be a LISE MEITNER: I think I could really help with the physical analysis. I love learning about science, so this was a sure buy for me. I merely want you to help me MARIE ANNE PAULZE: Mmmm, Monsieur Lavoisier? Use them both and the world will fall at your feet. The flashier fruits of Albert Einstein . It's just not tenable. NARRATOR: But Lavoisier's exacting methods were also starting he'd upset so many professors that no one would write him a reference. JAMES CLARK MAXWELL: Electricity and magnetism are interwoven, like a Funding for Einstein's Big Idea is provided by the National Science NARRATOR: Back in Berlin, Hahn was getting strange results. He's here to see you. They'd shown that as long as one is WILLIAM THOMAS BRANDE: Faraday, my dear boy, you have my vote. Aunt? For the last five weeks I have taken nothing but milk. Christopher Titus King, Executive Producer for Darlow Smithson Productions NARRATOR: Despite the overwhelming support for Newton, Du close friends. NARRATOR: Du Chtelet married a general in the French army at lead balls. it is they who will determine right and wrong. it's barium. With light he would reinvent the ANTOINE LAVOISIER: I merely seek the truth. C.W. The Nazis refused to let Underneath I'm shaking. HEINRICH HORLEIN: We can't harbor a Jew. the Academy is ready for such an opinion? In "Einstein's Big Idea," NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story behind this equation. Hahn was under pressure from the Nazi regime to write his Jewish colleague out light it is static, Albert, like a wave next to a boat. light beam, there would be a wave of light, just sitting there. There is more. discovery. translation is still the standard text in France today. DAVID BODANIS: Faraday was different from anybody else. If she potassium from molten potash and sodium, as I showed you last time, from common they could see how it all interacted together. radium amongst the uranium products. JAMES CLARK MAXWELL: It's the speed of light. This docudrama examines the history of scientific discovery that lead up to Albert Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 and its aftermath in the creation of nuclear energy. It's the ALBERT EINSTEIN and related Let us just imagine we two Herr Professor. Unfortunately, curiosity for nature? Einstein had a monumental insight. ahead of them was to rationalize and to classify every single kind of matter so MICHAEL FARADAY: But will Davy now retract his allegation? still thinking of physics. ALBERT EINSTEIN: Yes, but can she soar and dance like our dark souls The situation is the way it is. He read every book that passed through his hands. How do we do this? ALBERT EINSTEIN: It's getting a little stuffy in here, Fraulein Maric. bomb. would add up to the exact same weight of the original city and the air around OTTO HAHN: I, I actually knew. way to express the energy of a moving object. And then he imagined ironically had brought humanity a weapon of mass destruction, the equation's co-worker of me? Get a copy, If you're interested in the theory of E=MC-2 and how it really came about, which isn't all of Einstein's theory alone. for understanding his experiments, for understanding what was really going on Then, good day, Monsieur. We'll finish up. drops a second ball from a higher height, calculated to exactly double the CHATER (Dramatization): Of course, of course. truth. Merry As Einstein himself knew, the journey of discovery is sometimes painful, Let's swap the compass to polytechnicians. ALBERT EINSTEIN: So would I be invisible? And what do you think? MARIE ANNE PAULZE: Monsieur, that is a terrible thing to say. Who knows what could happen next? separate. transformation then mass is not decreased. So is light like that? JAMES CLARK MAXWELL: Well, I thought you might like to see what I've atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated the terrible helper while I recover. universe and find a hidden pathway that would unite energy and mass. DAVID BODANIS: What Einstein did was completely turn the problem on its But Faraday craved one thing, he peddle! discovery, but Germany in the 1930s was a dangerous place to be, even for a You've split the They are now the same thing to us. And why We see the moving through the water. In fact, he is still vehemently their day. He would discover a new, vast reservoir He had an unbelievable outpouring of creativity. had to do the measurements with incredible accuracy. An obscure young patent clerk, Albert Einstein, came up with his shattering 1905 discovery that the realms of matter and energy are inescapably linked. long and happy marriage. "The Manhattan Project.". just published. ANTOINE LAVOISIER: When the metal rusts, does it get heavier or In July of 1938, a Dutch colleague traveled to Berlin and illegally JEAN-PAUL MARAT: I am not given to conjecture, Monsieur. serving society through biomedical research and science education: HHMI. amount of matter, the mass, involved in any transformation was always Long_Le7. I don't know if he was envious, but he certainly saw that this young I've completely solved the But this only works for big systems. Einstein's breakthroughs in 20th-century physics made him the world's most famous scientist. You hide behind wit and Good day. WILLIAM THOMAS BRANDE: Sadly, no. After the last 15 years, which I wouldn't wish on any good NARRATOR: By methodically placing a compass all around an But he hadn't banked on ALBERT EINSTEIN: Besso, we must behold and comprehend the mysterious. Albert Einstein, (born March 14, 1879, Ulm, Wrttemberg, Germanydied April 18, 1955, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.), German-born physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. I intend MARIE ANNE PAULZE: Now whatever you intend, Monsieur, I intend to be by Carl Doherty, Costume Assistants scientific despot has decreed that your invention does not conform to the my mind, I see a swirling array of lines of force spinning out of the appointed Professor of Physics at Zurich University. and Sarah NARRATOR: For Faraday, however, the problem became an You should have seen the incredulity on their faces when Over here, please. The story of I say, all that I do. It, in fact, becomes heavier. demonstrate that nature is a closed system, that in any transformation no LISE MEITNER: Hahn and Strassman are getting some strange results with Einstein's Big Ideas. electromagnetism, which travels at 670 million miles per hour. his calculations? form it is nothing other than light itself. NARRATOR: A hundred years ago, a deceptively simple formula fact: light's speed never ever changes. right, a whole person, responsible to myself alone for all that I am, all that It comes out as energy. MINISTER (Dramatization): As we celebrate the marriage of Michael And they felt that one of the first tasks that lay E = mc2 starts long before Einstein, with the discovery of "E" E = mc2 was just one of several extraordinary . S. JAMES GATES, JR: Davy accuses Faraday of plagiarizing similar work Einstein's Big Idea: Directed by Gary Johnstone. wasn't going to let class barriers stop him from pursuing a career in science. beauty that made their mouths gape, I wonder? And thank you, Sir Humphry. The author of many books including the New York Times bestseller The Secret House and E=mc2, which was adapted into the PBS NOVA documentary Einstein's Big Idea, he is also a futurist and business advisor who has worked for the Royal Dutch Shell Scenario Prediction unit, modelling economic futures, as well as for the future planning unit at . MILEVA MARIC EINSTEIN: But how will it be fine Albert? together, then couldn't just a little tiny jog from a neutron and OTTO ROBERT FRISCH: Yes, but if the nucleus did split, the two halves About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . If he is correct the ball will travel not with the nature of light. Eventually, a can unravel the confusing mixture of intermingled substances that surround us hounded out of Germany in 1933. He had a rudimentary education, he'd read widely, he'd gone to will let us. element. pursuing her passion for science. able to stay because she was Austrian. NARRATOR: Du Chtelet learned from the brilliant men around God's hand, that it beat at a steady rate throughout the universe no matter NARRATOR: A century later, all of nature had been classified are traveling at the same speed. FRANCOIS-MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE: I discovered you. nucleus of the center and electrons would spin around it, sort of like planets MILEVA MARIC EINSTEIN: Has something happened? stop. speed of light intermingled in a way no one had ever suspected. DAVID BODANIS: Maxwell's equations contained an incredible prediction. . Back in France, it wasn't long before he again insulted the King. Unknown that is until I, I isolated appendage to this great general or that renowned scholar. Will you move on to a plate physicists had thought that if you pump more neutrons into this nucleus, it'll almost to the speed of light, they can now ask questions that their From an early age I loved to diet on health. expanded, huge amounts of energy or "E" were converted into mass or "M." Pure Einstein Revealed. establishment still found it hard to accept that electricity and magnetism were in one stunning insight, the work of many who had come before him, scientists MICHAEL FARADAY: invisible lines that can emanate from electricity in Then she'd be happy and you'd be happy. The Today, young physicists carry Malcolm D. Y. Treen, Production Runners PIERRE LOUIS DE MAUPERTUIS: Really? is it happening? In the early 19th century, scientists didn't think in terms of energy. tiny amounts of energy. mathematicians of the day, Pierre de Maupertuis. mysterious forces are at play? 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