Recommended for: Grades 9-12
Resource: String Theory: Strings to the Rescue
Media Type:
QuickTime Video
Length: 7m 57s
Size: 9.9 MB
In the last decades of his life, Albert Einstein was left behind by much of the rest of the physics world. While fully respecting his enormous accomplishments in relativity, gravity, and quantum theory, Einstein's contemporaries did not share his passion for unifying divergent strands of physics. Today, as string theorist Brian Greene explains in this video segment from NOVA, most physicists agree that Einstein was probably on to something after all.
Teachers' Domain, String Theory: Strings to the Rescue, published February 20, 2004, retrieved on ,
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/phy03.sci.phys.fund.totherescue/
- Background Essay
- Questions for Discussion
- Standards
Albert Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life working on his unification theory. Meanwhile, much of the rest of the physics world had traded its interest in unifying the forces of nature for a better understanding of the particles that make up matter. The result: the new and ever-developing quantum theory.
In the years leading up to Einstein's death in 1955 and afterward, the gap widened between physicists who relied on general relativity to study large objects and physicists who used quantum mechanics to understand tiny particles.
Each group had its own theory that worked for that particular discipline. That was the case until the concept of black holes was introduced during World War I. If black holes exist -- and physicists now generally agree they do -- they present a problem for the two-theory physics world. After all, the very bottom of a black hole is both massive and tiny, which means that to understand a black hole, both general relativity and quantum mechanics must be applied. Yet these two theories are in direct conflict with each other.
String theorists believe that the key to unifying these two conflicting ideas is in tiny loops or strands of energy called strings. If string theory is right, then all matter and all forces, no matter how big, small, powerful, or weak, are unified, because they all come from different vibrations of the same string.
In the years leading up to Einstein's death in 1955 and afterward, the gap widened between physicists who relied on general relativity to study large objects and physicists who used quantum mechanics to understand tiny particles.
Each group had its own theory that worked for that particular discipline. That was the case until the concept of black holes was introduced during World War I. If black holes exist -- and physicists now generally agree they do -- they present a problem for the two-theory physics world. After all, the very bottom of a black hole is both massive and tiny, which means that to understand a black hole, both general relativity and quantum mechanics must be applied. Yet these two theories are in direct conflict with each other.
String theorists believe that the key to unifying these two conflicting ideas is in tiny loops or strands of energy called strings. If string theory is right, then all matter and all forces, no matter how big, small, powerful, or weak, are unified, because they all come from different vibrations of the same string.
Loading Standards
Teachers' Domain is proud to be a Pathways portal to the National Science Digital Library.
See Also:
K-12 Subject:
Cosmology and Gravity
Quantum Mechanics
String Theory
Source: NOVA: "Elegant Universe"
This resource was adapted from NOVA: "Elegant Universe."
Resource Produced by:
Collection Developed by:
Collection Funded by:
