Hear my presentations to grade school kids on Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela, and spacetime.
I recently was invited to speak to grade school children about great physicists. The teacher asked me to speak about Newton, Einstein, and Hawking. Since I didn’t have any personal connections to Isaac Newton, I focused on Einstein and Hawking, since I knew people who knew them.
I love knowing that I know someone who knew some of the most influential, famous people who lived, whose work was mind-blowing. Though he wasn’t a physicist, since I also knew someone who knew Nelson Mandela, I included in the talk my one-degree-of-separation connection to Nelson Mandela.
I took questions from the audience (they weren’t mic’ed so you couldn’t hear them; I marked the silences I edited out with a whoosh noise), which led to me talking about
- A major influence leading me into physics
- Special Relativity
- Do I still use my science education
Bonus second talk on spacetime
They invited me back for a second time. The teacher asked me to “speak on spacetime”.
I wasn’t sure how to talk to grade school kids on spacetime, but I did my best. I hope it gets you thinking too.
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