vol III chap 12 sect 3
Previous: 12.2. Quantum Hall effects.
12.3. Analysis of learning trajectories.¶
Albert Einstein predicted the phenomena of condensation in the following publication Quantentheorie des einatomigen idealen gases. Königliche Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Sitzungsberichte, (1924), 261–267. At that time he was a mature and well recognized physicists of 45 years of age. The phenomena was experimentally discovered till 1994 by Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and Wolfgang Ketterle. What and how did Einstein learn to be able to make a theoretical prediction that was experimentally verified after 70 years? An answer to this question can be related to how prescriptive learning and emergent learning were present in Einstein´s life.
Unlike what is simple to learn and has been previously prescribed, learning the new is difficult, especially in recently explored topics, when important problems are poorly explained or badly solved; also when writing lacks precision, coherence and clarity. Prescriptive learning and emergent learning consider in different ways how the following elements are described in next Table.
| Table 12.1. Differences among prescriptive learning and emergent learning. | ||
|---|---|---|
| ELEMENTS | PRESCRIPTIVE | EMERGENT |
| ACTIVITIES |
- Well established and with anticipation. - Descriptions pretend to be clear, concise, and complete. - Meanings, requirements, and goals are well explained. - Complexity is minimized and emergency is suppressed. - Teaching is made by describing rules and doctrines. |
- Occur unexpectedly and are demanding. - Descriptions recognize and take advantage of diversities. - Being open to change what is new is approached as a challenge. - Complexity is confronted and emergency is promoted. - Teaching is made by building models and theories. |
| CONTENT | Dogmatic with a completely predetermined structure ready for assimilation. | Free outcomes to be determined, ready for application and evolution. |
| ACTORS | Dependent, obedient, and receptive. | Autonomous, critical, and participative. |
| SYSTEMS | Rigid and programmed in advance. | Flexible and self-organized. |
| INSTITUTIONS | Centralized in vertical hierarchies. | Branched in horizontal hierarchies. |
Albert Einstein learning trayectory.¶
Einstein’s life began in Ulm, Germany on March 14, 1879, and ended in Princeton, United States on April 18, 1955. For more information see the references at the end of the chapter. Next, we might ask in what types of schools did he learn.
Punitive barrack whose objective was to obey. His preuniversity learning was subjected to a traditional German instruction almost exclusively reduced to the transmission of information that had to be accepted and digested without questioning. Although he excelled in mathematics and physics, his school performance was mediocre and sometimes even poor. He paid little attention to the requirements of prescriptive learning related to encyclopedic-type content, implied conventional rote procedures, mainly expressed in terms of dogmatic, sectarian or authoritarian attitudes. He challenged systems and institutions and as an original and persistent autodidact, he began to generate some emerging learning of great creativity that he would later apply in all his intellectual productions.
Efficient factory whose objective was to produce. He could not be accepted to study physics at a university; after several attempts he was accepted at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. He independently learned what was prescriptive but interested him, and he took time to work on emerging learning outside what was established. Instead of repeating other people's ideas, he thought and persistently followed challenging questions that apparently made no sense. On December 13, 1900 he sent to the journal Annalen der Physik his first scientific paper at the age of twenty-one.
Emotional festival whose objective was to create. Throughout his life, his research work was empowered by a continuous emergent learning that made possible a unique scientific career where three epochs can be identified:
(1) Revolutionary explosion. In a period of 195 days five publications were submitted and accepted and at the end of the same year a sixth paper was submitted; he was 26 years old. Although those publications were written in German, in the second column of next Table 12.2 all the titles are in English. It is remarkable how self-explanatory are those titles.
| Table 12.2. Publications during the “Annus mirabillis” of 1905. | ||
|---|---|---|
| DATE | TITLE | CONTRIBUTIONS |
| March 17 | On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light. [Annalen der Physik (1905) 17, 132–148.] | Description of the corpuscular nature of light and explanation of the photoelectric effect. |
| April 30 | On a new determination of molecular dimensions. | PhD thesis at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. |
| May 11 | On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat. [Annalen der Physik (1905) 17, 549-560.] | Explanation of Brownian motion and Avogadro´s number calculation. |
| June 30 | On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. [Annalen der Physik (1905) 17, 891–921.] | Description of the special theory of relativity. |
| September 27 | Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content? [Annalen der Physik (1905) 18, 639–641.] | Obtention of equation $E = mc^2$. |
| December 19 | On the Theory of Brownian Motion. [Annalen der Physik (1906) 19, 371–381.] | A second paper on Brownian motion is received by the editors. It will be published next year. |
(2) Leadership in theoretical physics. . His realistic position regarding the existence of atoms and molecules remained against the opinion of many physicists in the early twentieth century. He convinced through the explanatory and predictive value of his theories. As an example of this capacity Table 12.3 indicates the number of years elapsed between five Einstein theoretical prediction and the experimental observation or production of the phenomenon in consideration.
| Table 12.3. Years between prediction and observation. | |
|---|---|
| PREDICTED PHENOMENON | YEARS |
| Nuclear energy | 34 |
| Gravitational shift towards the red | 44 |
| Stimulated energy radiation in laser | 37 |
| Bose-Einstein condensate | 70 |
| Entanglement of quantum states | 30 |
(3) Search and discrepancy. During many years he concentrated on problems that remained unresolved, like a unified field treatment of gravitational and quantum phenomena. He participated also in debates with Niels Bohr (1885-1962) about the interpretation of quantum mechanics and with David Hilbert (1862-1943) about the formulation of gravitational theories. Although his emergent learnings was declining, he published several books and wrote many letters and articles about philosophy of science, pacifism, politics, education, morality, cosmic religiosity, ...
By all means, a lot of learning can be obtained from Einstein´s learning trajectory.
REFERENCES¶
Physics Nobel Prizes.
MLA style: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sun. 18 Jun 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1913/onnes/lecture/
MLA style: Vitaly L. Ginzburg – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Tue. 10 Oct 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2003/ginzburg/lecture/
MLA style: Alexei Abrikosov – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 6 Feb 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2003/abrikosov/lecture/
MLA style: Leon N. Cooper – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sun. 18 Jun 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1972/cooper/lecture/
MLA style: John Bardeen – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 6 Feb 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1972/bardeen/lecture/
MLA style: Robert Schrieffer – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 6 Feb 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1972/schrieffer/lecture/
MLA style: Brian D. Josephson – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 6 Feb 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1973/josephson/lecture/
MLA style: Anthony J. Leggett – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 6 Feb 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2003/leggett/lecture/
MLA style: David M. Lee – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sun. 18 Jun 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1996/lee/lecture/
MLA style: J. Georg Bednorz – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sun. 18 Jun 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1987/bednorz/lecture/
MLA style: Wolfgang Ketterle – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sun. 18 Jun 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2001/ketterle/lecture/
MLA style: Eric A. Cornell – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Mon. 19 Jun 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2001/cornell/lecture/
MLA style: Advanced information. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Mon. 19 Jun 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2001/advanced-information/
Cao, Yuan; Fatemi, Valla; Demir, Ahmet; Fang, Shiang; Tomarken, Spencer L.; Luo, Jason Y.; Sanchez-Yamagishi, Javier D.; Watanabe, Kenji; Taniguchi, Takashi; Kaxiras, Efthimios; Ashoori, Ray C.; Jarillo-Herrero, Pablo (5 de marzo de 2018). Correlated insulator behaviour at half-filling in magic-angle graphene superlattices. En Springer Science and Business Media LLC, ed. Nature 556 (7699): 80-84.
Electrons in New Guises.
MLA style: Press release. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 30 Apr 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1998/press-release/
References about Einstein.
EINSTEIN, ALBERT, Out of my Later Years, The Philosophical Library, New York, (1950).
EINSTEIN, ALBERT, Ideas and Opinions, Wings Books, New York, (1954).
FRANK, PHILIPP, Einstein: His Life and Times, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York, (1953).
GAL-OR, BENJAMIN, Cosmology, Physics and Philosophy; Springer-Verlag, New York, (1983).
GOLDBERG, STANLEY, Understanding Relativity. Origin and Impact of a Scientific Revolution, Birkhäuser, Boston, (1984).
JAMMER, MAX, Einstein and Religion. Physics and Theology, Princeton University Press, Princeton, (1999).
KUHN, THOMAS S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, (1970).
LANCZOS, CORNELIUS, Albert Einstein and the cosmic world order, Interscience Publishers, New York, (1965).
LAUGHLIN, ROBERT B., A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down. Basic Books, New York, (2006).
PAGELS, HEINZ R., The Dreams of Reason. The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity, Bantam Books, New York, (1988).
PAIS, ABRAHAM, Subtle is the Lord… The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein, Oxford University Press, Oxford, (1982).
RIGDEN, JOHN S., Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, (2009).
SCHILPP, PAUL ARTHUR, Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 7, Evanston, IL, (1949).
STACHEL, JOHN, Einstein Miracolous Year. Five Papers that Changed the Face of Physics. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey (1998).