Einstein's Clocks and Thought Experiments

 Einstein's Clocks 

 OR 

 A Flight Of Imagination  

 That Revealed The Real World
 In 1905 

 About Einstein's thought experiments
 and his ability to imagine in the moment 

Left: Full shot of the Zytglogge tower in Bern Switzerland,

 with the astronomical clock on the bottom and the bell at the top in the tower

Right: Close-up of the bell and bell ringer in the tower

Full shot of the astronomical clock (left) with the animated figures (right) 

that parade and move every hour, known as the Zytglogge bellworks

Close-up of the hour hand and Zodiac wheel

Father Time sits next to the astronomical clock 

and presides over the animated figures who parade every hour

                                  A sketch of the Zytglogge tower and clock from 1534                                                      

A figure representing Chronos, the Greek god of time,
who strikes the bell, that was cast in 1405, on the hour

A shaft of light

 Late one night 

 after struggling with the physics of light, 

 Albert heard the distinctive ring 

 of Bern's Zytglogge clock tower, 

 with its 500 year-old bell 

 struck by a figure 

 representing Chronos, the Greek god of time. 

 In a flash 

 he was riding a streetcar 

 at the speed of light 

 and looking back at the time 
 on the Bern clock 

 which froze 
 because the light from its later time 
 could never catch him. 

 Yet he could see the minutes 
 on his pocket watch were 

 continuing. 

 And then he knew 

 time was relative. 

A streetcar with the clock behind it 

around the time Einstein lived in Bern

Bern streetcar around the time Einstein lived there

Streetcar interior

Left: Inner workings of a pocket watch

Right: A Swiss pocket watch made around 1900 with Roman numerals

The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.

Plato

There comes a point where the mind takes a leap 

— call it intuition or what you will — 

and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, 

but can never prove how it got there. 

All great discoveries have involved such a leap.

Albert Einstein