Nobel Prize WinnersPassage ARead the text:Einsteins CompassEinsteinsCompassYoung Albert was a quiet boy. “Perhaps too quiet”, thought Hermann and Pauline Einstein. He spoke hardly at all until age 3. They might have thought him slow, but there was something elseevident. When he did speak, hed say the most unusual things. At age 2, Pauline promised him a surprise. Albert was excited, thinking she was bringing him some new fascinating toy. But when his mother presented him with his new baby sister Maja, all Albert could do was stare with questioning eyes. Finally heresponded, “where are the wheels?”When Albert was 5 years old and sick in bed, Hermann Einstein brought him adevicethat didstirhisintellect. It was the first time he had seen a compass. He lay there shaking andtwisting the odd thing, certain he could fool it into pointing off in a new direction. But try as he might, the compass needle would always find its way back to pointing in the direction of north. “A wonder,” he thought. The invisible force that guided the compass needle wasevidenceto Albert that there was more to our world than meets the eye. There was “something behind things, something deeply hidden.”So beganAlbert Einsteins journey down a road of exploration that he would follow the rest of his life. “I have no special gift,” he would say, “I am only passionately curious.”Albert Einstein was more than just curious though. He had thepatienceand determination that kept him at things longer than most others. Other children would build houses of cards up to 4 stories tall before the cards would lose balance and the wholestructurewould come falling down. Maja watched in wonder as her brother Albert methodically built his card buildings to 14 stories. Later he would say, “Its not that Im so smart, its just that I stay with problems longer.”One advantage Albert Einsteins developing mind enjoyed was the opportunity to communicate with adults in an intellectual way. His uncle, an engineer, would come to the house, and Albert would join in the discussions. His thinking was also stimulated by a medical student who came over once a week for dinner and lively chats.At age 12, Albert Einstein came upon a set of ideas that impressed him as “holy.” It was a little book on Euclidean plane1geometry. The concept that one could provetheoremsofanglesand lines that were in no way obvious made an “indescribable impression” on the young student. He adopted mathematics as the tool he would use to pursue hiscuriosityand prove what he would discover about the behavior of theuniverse.He wasconvinced that beauty lies in thesimplistic. Perhaps thisinsightwas the real power of hisgenius. Albert Einstein looked for the beauty ofsimplicityin theapparentlycomplex nature and saw truths that escaped others. While the expression of his mathematics might be accessible to only a few sharp minds in the science, Albert couldcondensetheessenceof his thoughts so anyone could understand.For instance, his theories ofrelativityrevolutionized science and unseated the laws of Newton that were believed to be a complete description of nature for hundreds of years. Yet when pressed for an example that people could relate to, he came up with this: “Put your hand on a hotstovefor a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. THATs relativity.”Albert Einsteins wealth of new ideaspeakedwhile he was still a young man of 26. In 1905 he wrote 3fundamentalpapers on the nature of light (a proof ofatoms), the specialtheoryof relativity and the famousequationof atomic power: E=mc . For the next 20 years, the curiosity that was sparked by wanting to know what controlled the compass needle and his persistence to keep pushing for the simple answers led him to connect space and time and find a new state of matter.What was hisultimatequest?“I want to know how Godcreated this world . I want to know His thoughts; the rest aredetails.”Note1 Euclidean plane geometry (欧几里得平面几何):A branch of geometry dealing with the properties of flat surfaces and of planar figures, such as the triangle or the Note circle. The Greek mathematician Euclid first studied the subject in the 4th century BC.Think About It:窗体顶端1. What do you think makes a successful scientist?Answer:1. Curiosity, patience, determination, genius, persistence .2. What kind of boy was Einstein in his parents eyes?Answer:2. They might have thought him slow because he hardly spoke until he was almost three years old. . Einstein once said: “Curiosity has its own reason for existence.” How do you understand this statement?Answer:2. Einstein was right because he himself was passionately curious when he was young. His curiosity was sparked by wanting to know what controlled the compass needle a