1 Nikola Tesla Lights Up the World what is now Croatia Tesla’s family was Serbian His father was a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church His mother invented clever household tools Tesla studied math and physics in school He learned engineering In 1884 he immigrated to the United States He began working for Thomas Edison But Tesla disagreed with Edison’s ideas Edison used direct current DC electricity Tesla had an idea he believed would be more efficient In 1887 Tesla started his own company He developed a system to generate alternating current AC electricity In 1893 Tesla demonstrated his system at the Chicago World’s Fair The crowd was impressed The invention brought him money and respect Tesla was hired to design a new power plant It would generate power from The world runs on electricity because of Nikola Tesla He invented the power system we use today He also thought up wireless communication Tesla was born in 1856 He lived in the mountains of 4
Tesla reading while his equipment produces alternating currents June 1901 Niagara Falls He designed a system that worked perfectly It produced enough electricity to light New York City THE MAD SCIENTIST People often found Tesla’s habits odd His meals had to be boiled He washed his hands constantly He was very afraid of germs But he loved to feed the pigeons in New York City parks He even took hurt pigeons home He nursed them back to health Tesla’s ideas were ahead of his time He believed the world could be connected wirelessly He predicted many things about the future 112 Number of US patents held by Nikola Tesla Tesla emigrated from Croatia in 1884 for a job He was an electrical engineer and inventor The power system he developed is still used today 5
2 Albert Einstein Explains Space and Time to study electrical engineering Einstein did not like school but he was very curious He taught himself math and physics He passed his university exams despite not going to class In 1905 Einstein changed physics forever He published a series of new ideas One was the math equation E mc2 It explained how matter is turned into energy He also published his theory of special relativity The theory came from Einstein’s thought experiments Einstein liked to picture his ideas in his mind He could figure out whether or not they were right One thought experiment was about light speed He pictured traveling on a wave of light He realized something At light speed time passes at a different rate Einstein discovered that space and time depend on point of view In 1921 he won the Nobel Prize in Physics In 1999 TIME magazine named Albert Einstein Person of the Century Einstein was a scientist whose ideas stunned the world He changed how we think about the universe Einstein was born in Germany in 1879 His family was Jewish Einstein’s father wanted him 6
THINK ABOUT IT Einstein’s thought experiments were scientific tools He was able to imagine how light would travel through space How would you prepare for your own thought experiment In 1933 Adolf Hitler banned Jewish professors from teaching Einstein lost his job He immigrated to the United States to continue his work Einstein’s influence helped physics grow in America 4 Number of physics papers Albert Einstein published in 1905 Einstein emigrated from Germany in 1933 to escape discrimination He was a physicist who helped create modern physics He developed the theory of relativity and the math equation E mc2 Einstein received his American citizenship in 1940 7
