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September
2002 Issue- Recommended Amateurs Take On the Universe
- SciAm Perspectives The Chronic Complaint
- Skeptic Smart People Believe Weird Things
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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.
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