How do you explain the importance of Einstein's contributions to a 5th grader?

Dear dg4z-ga;

Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to answer your interesting question.

How do you explain the importance of Einstein's contributions to a 5th
grader? Simple, just have them read elementary teacher Jason Haas?
article entitled, ?Albert Einstein: A Pretty Cool Guy?.

Albert Einstein: A Pretty Cool Guy
http://www.wesleyan.edu/synthesis/culture-cubed/haas/maintemp.htm

As a teacher, Jason Haas also took an interest in Einstein because, as
he put it, Einstein ?is probably one of the most influential figures
in science in the twentieth century, but more importantly, he was a
man of great character?. Hass shares your interest in promoting
Einstein?s contributions to young children, which is why he
intentionally penned this article so that it was both informative and
appealing primarily to children in grades 3-6.

If, as an adult, science and history impress you in the least, I think
you will agree that this article, even it's simplicity, is still quite
fascinating.


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Best regards;
Tutuzdad-ga ? Google Answers Researcher



INFORMATION SOURCES

Albert Einstein: A Pretty Cool Guy
http://www.wesleyan.edu/synthesis/culture-cubed/haas/maintemp.htm


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Albert Einstein kids

Researcher did a good job answering a question, and this is
 an opinion, not on researchers work, but on the article he found.

I would not recommend any  to give/read this or similar stories to children.

It is using words which mean nothing (to a child), like rigid, mass,
speed of light,.. and creates an impression that science is
meaningless giberish which
needs to be parroted. There is no explanation and there is lot of
romantic nonsense (like Einstein did not like school because it was
'old' science).

Instead encourage the child to look at the stars. They actually move!
Did you notice that?

And observe the shadow of a stick...
etc.

That will do more for an e v e n t u a l  understanding of what those
people Kepler, Newton, Einstein  ...  dicovered ...

I don't think that children of any grade should be denied any
information about science. Telling children about science is always
good.

Let's remember what was the Albert Einstein's contribution that earned
him a Nobel  Prize: photoelectric effect. Now it was widely proven
that light is a wave, but in some aspects it had the behavior of a
particle. Light can be diffracted - find and show then the diffraction
patterns around things seen in microscopes. On the other hand, light
bounces off, like a ball, from mirrors.

Scientist Max Planck made up an assumption that he regarded a
calculation trick: what if the light was little wavelets, quanta?
They'd have a wavelength associated with energy. You could show this
using a string: wave it fast, and the emitted wave is of a short
wavelength, and vice versa. Bright light would mean only many quanta,
not quanta with shorter wavelengths.

Einstein showed that this must be the case, because a system similar
to a solar panel would produce electricity if and only if the light
had a short enough wavelength. No brighter light would help, if the
quanta didn't have enough energy in the first place. In equation-talk,
it'd be E = hf - W, where E is the energy, h is a number, f is the
frequency of the light wave and W is the minimum energy to kick an
electron off (work function).

This is palatable to 5th graders. Relativistic coordinate abuse and
four-dimensional tensors are too obscure for anyone less than a
physicist, I say. In relativity, inertia was the best thing explained.
This, however, needs some demonstration of the four-dimensional
universe using a three-dimensional party balloon, which may prove too
difficult. (Children are not stupid, but understanding what's an
analogy and what's fact may be very difficult to teach.)

aikamat-ga Hi

We do have a (honest) difference of opinion - 
which is not a bad thing ..

Not in:

"I don't think that children of any grade should be denied any
information about science."

But in

"Telling children about science is always good. .."

There is to much telling - and to little little showing: 

 I would advocate (even help to set up) for children to 
measure photoeffect (which is not hard) before I would tell them what
they should find. This diseease is worldwide.

In real life, physics is based on experiment. Before Planck and Einstein
could present their THEORY, they have seen the spectrum ofhHydrogen and the
measurements of photoeffect.

- the way it is presented in schools, worldway, these days, it is hard to 
differentiate science from the religion. Children are not stupid, and that
is one reason why this way of 'explaining science' to them is turning
them off science.

  ...