Cover Image: September 2002 Scientific American Magazine See Inside

Einstein's Hot Time [Preview]

Great theoreticians know that hypothesis must be confirmed with experiment















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Steve Mirsky

Image: FRANK VERONSKY

A well-known quote from Albert Einstein, a member of the all-time time team, is his attempt to make relativity more accessible to the layperson: "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."

Some serendipitous research shows that the pretty girl/hot stove line turns out to be more than just a clever musing. On a recent troll through exceedingly dusty stacks at the local library, I stumbled upon the statement in its original form. Amazingly, the pretty girl/hot stove quote is actually the abstract from a short paper written by Einstein that appeared in the now defunct Journal of Exothermic Science and Technology (JEST, Vol. 1, No. 9; 1938). Apparently, the great theoretician tried his hand, and other body parts, at experimentation to derive his simple explanation for relativity. Here now, in its entirety, is that paper.


This article was originally published with the title Einstein's Hot Time.



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