A celebration of a man and his scientific geniusEinstein: The former patent clerk who invented E=mc2 bursts to life at a Waterloo festival featuring a can of `brain drink' from AustriaOct 02, 2005 01:00 AM
Peter Calamai
SCIENCE REPORTER
WATERLOO—Albert Einstein burst figuratively to life here yesterday at the kick-off for an mind-stretching celebration of the science, times, personality and legacy of the world's most recognizable scientist.
Hundreds attended the opening lectures, demonstrations and exhibits of EinsteinFest, an extravaganza that continues daily until Oct. 23. More than 8,000 free tickets have been issued electronically by the organizers at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, which sometimes calls itself a "factory" for producing future Einsteins.
The EinsteinFest offerings go well beyond talking about physics, or even science, to feature bistro jazz and classical concerts, silent films, hands-on experiments for children and exhibits that include a can of Einstein "brain" drink from Austria.
There are even four performances of a play by comedian Steve Martin in which Einstein meets Elvis and Picasso at a Paris bar in 1904.
"Science is not some dry and desiccated affair," said Perimeter executive director Howard Burton in opening EinsteinFest.
"Being creative scientifically is no different than being creative musically or artistically," he said.
The festival is Canada's most ambitious contribution to world-wide celebrations marking the centenary of 1905, called Einstein's "miraculous year." In a little over six months the 26-year-old patent clerk in Switzerland poured out a series of scientific papers that revolutionized humanity's concepts of light, matter and energy, including the world's most famous formula, E=mc2.
"His fame is rooted in what he did, but not many people have much knowledge about what he did," American physicist and author John Rigden said.
As Rigden spoke inside the Institute's futuristic building, Jon Hackett was outside in a tent nursing fingers bruised in demonstrating one application of Einstein's most famous formula, the vast energy released by converting just a little mass in a nuclear chain reaction.
Hackett and fellow University of Waterloo physics student Robbie Henderson were trying to set 66 mouse traps, placing ping pong balls where the cheese normally goes, all inside a large acrylic box.
But the slightest jar would spring a trap, bruising fingers and, worse, prematurely loosing the ping pong balls.
Finally all the traps were set. One of the youngsters in the Physica Phantastica tent got to drop a ping pong ball into the box.
In a second 66 balls flew everywhere in the ensuing chain reaction, and Einstein burst to life here yet another time.
http://www.thestar.com/ScienceTech/article/138830
