Know-It-All

Through the centuries, we've charted lands and oceans. We've invented and built a wide array of transportation methods to take us too far away places, and not just horizontal travel. In nineteen fifty three, two men reached the summit of Mount Everest, and in recent years we sent humans in submersibles through the Pacific Oceans, Mariana Trench, and then there's space. We've been to the Moon and landed probes on Mars.

Despite the jokes, the moon is not made of cheese, although the ancient Greeks did exile a philosopher for believing the Moon was just a giant rock and not a god, which reminds me we've believed a lot of crazy things about the Earth over the years, and it's taken centuries to dispel a lot of those notions. But in early eighteen hundreds of America, we were still exploring and had a lot of questions. Curiosity is a good thing, after all. Captain John Cleaves Simes, Jr. Was a military captain who

had served in the War of eighteen twelve. He was well educated and well read, but of all the subjects he had studied, the one that interested him the most was the Earth. He wasn't a scientist by any means, although he had a few theories about our planet and he thought we should explore them. He published a Pamplet's explaining his theories in detail, and had five hundred copies made. Then he toured the United States and handed them out

to scientists and politicians during his lectures. His theories were met with plenty of skepticism, and he turned to his societal connections to give him some credibility. He held a fundraiser for an expedition to the North Pole. If there was proper funding, he proposed explorers would bring back all the proof necessary to back up his claims, and soon enough he caught the attention of one politician in particular, who had enough power to make his dream of exploration

a reality, President John Quincy Adams. During his presidency, Adams established the Naval Observatory in Washington, d c. Which had drawn considerable ridicule. He had also been instrumental in establishing the Smithsonian Institute. John Quincy was the eldest son of John Adams, the second President of the United States. Considered highly intelligence, he had attended top schools all over Europe, eventually earning ad mission at Harvard, where he situated at

the top of his class. And as a side note, Adams also loved to skinny dip and regularly swam nude in the Potomac River. It has no connection to our story, but if that little fact has to live inside my head, it gets to live inside yours as well. Like Simes, Adams loved the thrill of discovery and presented the project to Congress, but Congress didn't see the value in spending

taxpayer dollars for such an endeavor, calling it ludicrous. At the time, though presidents didn't need as much approval, and Adams overrode Congress and back simes proposal anyway. Simes believed that the North and South Poles had deep caves and he wanted to explore them. He estimated that one men would be sufficient to carry out the study. At the time, no one knew what minerals or metals they might find along the way. But jun Quincy Adams didn't remain in

office long, just one term. The next President, Andrew Jackson, had agreed with Congress that simes theories were ridiculous, and once he was an power he immediately canceled the project. By then, however, Sim's health had begun to fail and he was never able to garner attention for his theories. Again, well that's not exactly true. He may have inspired science fiction writers years later, and what exploration had the sixth President of the United States authorized a journey to the

center of the Earth. You see, while both Symmes and Adams knew the Earth was round, they also believed that it was hollow. When we think of brilliant minds, we think of people like Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie, and Alan Turing, innovators who changed art, science, and every other way we understand our world. One mind, however, stands out as one of the greatest in his field. Albert Einstein was a man who was widely considered one of the

most brilliant physicists who have ever lived. Just a mention of his name and one cannot help but think of his theory of relativity. He equals mc squared, an equation that everyone knows, but few actually understand. However, Einstein did quite a bit of work before that. One of his earliest papers was written on the topic of capillary action. Anyone who has dipped a washcloth into a puddle of water and watched the liquid creep upward has witnessed capillarity.

It's also called wicking, name for what happens when hot wax moved toward a lit candle. Wick Einstein's article on it was published in nineteen o one, and it explained his theory that a force like gravity was what attracted the water molecules up the sides of a tube. Unfortunately, his paper wasn't accurate, but it did set the stage for a breakthrough yet to come. Later. In nineteen oh five, Einstein t hackled the concept that had stumped English botanist

Robert Brown a few decades earlier. Back in seven, Round had placed to drop of dust filled water beneath his microscope and noticed something odd. The bits of dust in the droplet were moving all over the place, shivering randomly. It wasn't until Einstein revisited Brown's observations for his own paper that he found an explanation. The dust wasn't shaking on its own. It was being pushed around the water

by molecules that were invisible to the naked eye. Though the molecules would jostle the dust grains on all sides equally most of the time, they could also bump them from one side without warning, sending them careening elsewhere. And although it was Einstein who had uncovered the truth, today the concept is known as Brownie in motion. But Einstein didn't sit still. He continued to research and analyze for the next fifty years. For example, in nineteen seventeen, he'd

been theorizing about something he called spontaneous emission. It was a phenomenon that occurred when an atom charged with photons left its high energy state by emitting those photons, which dropped into a low energy state. The process also worked the other way around, too, with low energy atoms absorbing photons to advance to a higher energy state. But Einstein had a problem. He wanted to accurately calculate the kind of radiation these atoms gave off, but other physicists were

finding vastly different results in their own experiments. So Einstein went back to the drawing board. He looked at his formulas and hypothesized that photons moved together when they were in the same state. If the photons traveled in one formation, then a high energy atom would emit its own photon in the same direction. That had been the missing piece of the puzzle, and so Einstein changed his theory from

spontaneous emission to stimulated emission. Thirty years later, when physicists used mirrors to reflect a stream of photons, they called their discovery this light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation in honor of Einstein's paper, But that name was just too long for normal conversation, so they simply shortened it to laser, and those lasers are now used in military weapons, DVD players, and even toys that we can annoy our

cats with. As for his work on Brownie and motion, well, it's been used to analyze how stock market prices change over time and to predict the performance of markets around the world, and six years after publishing his article on capillary action, it found its own real world application. A company from Pennsylvania had been looking for an alternative to cloth towels, which often became home to mold and disease from frequent use. What the company eventually produced was disposable, inexpensive,

and absorbent. The Scott Paper Company unveiled their new paper towels in nineteen o seven, and ever since, Einstein's theory of capillarity is used every time someone needs to clean up a big spill. Sure, Albert Einstein knew a lot about the speed of light and theoretical physics, but he also contributed to some of the most important scientific discoveries

in history. He may well have run into a few bumps along the way, but he wasn't the kind of guy to cry over spilt milk, because if he did, he knew he had the perfect tool to mop it right up. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast

dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works, I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.