Talk:Einstein's thought experiments

Defloridation steps
Although I can document the in-context use of the words "great," "irresistible," "romantic," "contraptions," and "pursued" in the secondary source literature, I have removed them because they could be considered florid. Are there any others that you would suggest?
 * Revision as of 17:37, 2 May 2018
 * Before: The great Solvay Debates
 * After: The Solvay Debates


 * Revision as of 19:40, 2 May 2018
 * Before: The topic of how Einstein arrived at special relativity has been an irresistible one to many scholars, and it is not hard to understand why. His story is utterly romantic:
 * After: The topic of how Einstein arrived at special relativity has been a fascinating one to many scholars, and it is not hard to understand why:


 * Revision as of 20:28, 2 May 2018
 * Before: In his great Solvay Debates with Bohr on the nature of reality (1927 and 1930), he devised imaginary contraptions
 * After: In his Solvay Debates with Bohr on the nature of reality (1927 and 1930), he proposed imaginary devices


 * Revision as of 09:25, 2 May 2018
 * Before: . In his youth, he rode beams of light.
 * After (1): In his youth, he pursued beams of light.
 * Revision as of 21:53, 2 May 2018
 * After (2): In his youth, he mentally chased beams of light.


 * There is one florid word that I refuse to remove, however. That is where I refer to the EPR paper as being a "profound" contribution to the literature on quantum mechanics. (In the secondary source literature, the word "profound" is usually applied to Bell's discovery of how to rework the EPR proposal into an actual experiment, but it also has been applied to the EPR paper itself.)

Would these revisions be sufficient for you to remove the &#123;&#123;tone&#125;&#125; template? Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 07:49, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

Permissible length of text excerpt under "Fair Use"
I replaced a couple of quotations from the public domain Wikisource (Saha) translation of On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies with the translation in the Digital Einstein Papers. Neither English nor German were native languages for Saha, who was an Indian physicist, and the Wikisource translation suffers from that.

The longest text excerpt from the Digital Einstein Papers is 218 words. "In general, Princeton University Press considers text excerpts shorter than 250 words to fall under the provisions of “Fair Use” under copyright law." https://press.princeton.edu/permissions.html

Other quotations from other sources are all considerably shorter than 250 words.

Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 10:46, 18 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Earwig's Copyvio Detector is a useful general tool for finding hot spots in articles, but doesn't deal with the specific issues you mentioned. StrayBolt (talk) 17:13, 18 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Give them credit for their translation from German to English! Otherwise, it is plagiarism. JRSpriggs (talk) 01:40, 19 August 2018 (UTC)


 * There are clear links to the sources of the quotations from the Digital Einstein Papers, as well as all other, shorter quoted excerpts from all other sources. What else is required? Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 03:17, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I am going through Template:Citation, and although there are fields for inserting the name of the translator, I do not see any fields appropriate for inserting information on the publisher of a translation. The translations in the volume of the Digital Einstein Papers that I cite from are attributed to Anna Beck, but they were closely reviewed by the editorial staff led by Diana Kormos Buchwald. What do you suggest? Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 03:52, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I think I've figured out how to do this. Right now, for the 218 word quote from the Digital Einstein Papers translation of "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", I have a single citation to the original German publication, which has a URL to the translation. How about I include two citations for this quotation, one to the original German publication, the second to the translation? Will that work? I'll do the same where appropriate for other quotations, of course. Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 04:40, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Annus mirabilis
I hope my dummy undo, removing a space allowing for a dummy edit, is not perceived as an offence, but my core argument fit in this edit summary. As a small addendum one might note that the Latin original mirabilis has more of "gorgeous" than of "miracle". Purgy (talk) 07:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)


 * It's not enough of a difference of opinion to fight on either side for. Anyhow, could you take a look at Relativistic Doppler effect? That article was in terrible shape, and I've just spent 10 days rewriting the article, so that, by character count, about 80% of the current article represents my verbiage. Also, 8/11 of the figures are ones that I drew to support my revisions. Thanks! Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 08:14, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Einstein "largely self-taught in physics"? - review requested
From the article: "The topic of how Einstein arrived at special relativity has been a fascinating one to many scholars: A lowly, twenty-six year old patent officer (third class), largely self-taught in physics and completely divorced from mainstream research, nevertheless in the year 1905 produced four extraordinary works [...]"

Einstein had a physics degree and he was working on his PhD which he completed in 1905. He may not have been a researcher in the typical academic setting but the phrasing in this paragraph makes him seem much more of an outsider than he probably was. Could someone more knowledgeable chime in? -- Comment by‎ 2001:16b8:2bc2:d00:85cf:2917:c274:61a0 added 19:05, 5 May 2019


 * Thanks for bringing this up. I will address your question with an extended footnote in the next few days. Einstein was very disappointed in the curriculum at the Polytechnic. The physics training was geared towards the training of future engineers rather than as a discipline in its own right. It did not cover cutting-edge research that Einstein considered of fundamental importance. Professor Weber, for instance, "simply ignored anything since Helmholtz". Although basic kinetic theory of gases was taught, Einstein had to learn deeper aspects of the subject by studying the recently published books of Boltzmann. The new electromagnetic field theory was ignored. Einstein read works by Hertz, Drude (through which he picked up Maxwell's theory), and Lorentz on his own.
 * In other words, it was only through his self-study (and cutting a lot of classes) that Einstein kept himself in tune with the mainstream of physics research. Keeping to physics as taught at the Polytechnic would have left him an "outsider". Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 03:28, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle might be evaded
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle can't be evaded, if the dependant outcome is based on absence of the uncertainties. The only type of evasion is making sure the outcome is not dependant on the absence of the uncertainties. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.238.45.149 (talk) 12:41, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Misleading summary in footnote
A footnote in the EPR section starts: then This combination is creating content by synthesis. The Landman ref used for the Rosenfeld quote analyzes the quote. That analysis should be reported as is, not the quote. What Landman says:
 * Fölsing, in his biography of Einstein, suggests that Rosen actually originated the ideas in the EPR paper.
 * This claim is contradicted by statements made by Rosenfeld
 * epr was actually written by Podolsky,38 and the argument Einstein himself had in mind was much simpler than what one finds in epr.39

In my opinion this entire footnote is a "spoiler" casting doubt on the authenticity of Einstein's work. As such it should not be in a footnote. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:40, 30 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I also don't think the footnote adds anything. The paragraph following it says:
 * After seeing the paper in print, Einstein found himself unhappy with the result. His clear conceptual visualization had been buried under layers of mathematical formalism.
 * Johnjbarton (talk) 14:53, 30 March 2024 (UTC)