guthriedm15's blog

“Einstein’s Big Idea” helped to remind me that science is a craft that doesn’t take place in a vacuum; in other words, it’s a communal effort to answer questions about nature. While Einstein is perhaps the most famous scientist of all time (perhaps rightly so), it’s important to realize that he did not make the scientific advances alone. He was simply at the culminating point of hundreds of years of scientific inquiry. If it were not for Newton, Planck, and other important scientists before him, perhaps he would have never come to the conclusions that he was able to decide on within his lifetime. Today, scientists are standing on the shoulders of giants from the past.

In addition to the communal effort, I came to understand that great scientists are often simple and extremely curious men and women that are determined to answer the questions that they have about the universe. Einstein’s childlike obsession with the idea of light led to the discovery of the world’s most famous equation: E=mc2. Because of this important equation and the understanding that it brought to the world, many technological and scientific advances have been made. Because of Faraday’s fascination with electromagnetism, we understand so much about the magnetic lines that come from electrical current. The curiosity of some very determined men and women is responsible for many of the things that we have today.

The sort of film is fascinating to me because I want to become a professional scientist. It helps me to continue to chase my own curiosity in hopes of finding answers that could potentially bring a change to the world. Through science, we have the chance to solve many of the problems that we face today as a whole.