To Lesson 2 My family

Satomi (Japan)

There are five members in my family: my mom, dad, grandmother, brother and myself. My dad works for a golf company. My mom is a housewife. My brother is majoring in tourism at Rikkyo University. When I was four, we moved from Kanagawa to Tokyo because we bought a new house. Now, we’re living with my grandma. She used to be a very energetic ikebana teacher, but she’s getting old. So, we’re supporting her as much as possible. I was influenced by her very much because in my childhood she mainly took care of me and I wanted to be a woman like her in every respect. Now, she’s not what she used to be; however, I really love her and my family also really loves her. That’s why we’ll continue to look after her. As for my grandpa, he died before I was born. Therefore I don’t know very much about him. One thing I know about him is that thanks to his job (teacher), he didn’t have to go to the war.

Daniel (USA)

My immediate family consists of six people. I am the youngest of four children. I have an elder brother John, who is twenty-five and two sisters. Jackie is twenty-two, while Anne-Marie is twenty-eight. John graduated from the University of Michigan and is an engineer, while Jackie has just graduated from the University of John Carol. Anne-Marie is an attorney, and currently works for McDonalds, dealing with their corporate material. My father has been the provider for the family as a doctor, and my mother works as a secretary and housemother. My family is always there for me through the rough times, even though I see little of them now.

Sarah (USA)

My family consists of my father (George), mother (Jennifer), my elder sister Korie, me, and my younger sister Vanessa. Korie is 21, and she is a senior at the Ohio State University. She has a double major of journalism and political science and is an editor of the school’s newspaper, the Lantern. She plans to graduate after the summer quarter. My little sister, Vanessa, is 5 years old, and is in her last year of pre-school. She will start kindergarten next year. My father and mother are both alumni of the Ohio State University. My father works for Conrail/CSX, and my mother as a family and consumer sciences teacher for Benjamin Logan High School. My parents made our family’s home in Belle Center in 1980. This was after living in Marysville, Ohio, and Runnemede, New Jersey, respectively. The house that we call home now has always been home to me.

To Lesson 4 Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879. He enjoyed classical music and played the violin. One story Einstein liked to tell about his childhood was of a wonder he saw when he was four or five years old: a magnetic compass. The needle’s invariable northward swing, guided by an invisible force, profoundly impressed the child. The compass convinced him that there had to be “something behind things, something deeply hidden”.

Even as a small boy Albert Einstein was self-sufficient and thoughtful. According to family legend he was a slow talker, pausing to consider what he would say. His sister remembered the concentration and perseverance with which he would build houses of cards.

Albert Einstein’s first job was that of patent clerk.

In 1933, he joined the staff of the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He accepted this position for life, living there until his death. Einstein is probably familiar to most people for his mathematical equation about the nature of energy, E= MC².

Albert Einstein wrote a paper with a new understanding of the structure of light. He argued that light can act as though it consists of discrete, independent particles of energy, in some ways like the particles of a gas. A few years before, Max Planck’s work had contained the first suggestion of discreteness in energy, but Einstein went far beyond this. His revolutionary idea seemed to contradict the universally accepted theory that light consists of smoothly oscillating electromagnetic waves. But Einstein showed that light quanta, as he called the particles of energy, could help to explain phenomena being studied by experimental physicists. For example, he made clear how light ejects electrons from metals.

There was a well-known kinetic energy theory that explained heat as an effect of the ceaseless motion of atoms; Einstein proposed a way to put the theory to a new and crucial experimental test. If tiny but visible particles were suspended in a liquid, he said, the irregular bombardment by the liquid’s invisible atoms should cause the suspended particles to carry out a random jittering dance. One should be able to observe this through a microscope, and if the predicted motion were not seen, the whole kinetic theory would be in grave danger. But just such a random dance of microscopic particles had long since been observed. Now the motion was explained in detail. Albert Einstein had reinforced the kinetic theory, and he had created a powerful new tool for studying the movement of atoms.

Einstein’s researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important.

Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920’s he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935.

Einstein’s gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude. Music played an important role in his life. He married Mileva Marie in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and that very year he married his cousin, Elsa Lowenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.