Part VII: Somaliland Educational Series: Brief History of World Education and the Theory of General Relativity-Albert Einstein
Goal/Vision: Somaliland: A well-educated, democratic state producing highly educated, high, doctors, engineers,
“Education is the most important commodity for human life than any other of the vital ingredients of life such as water, food and oxygen. The nourishment in education is even much more valuable than the nutrients in food such as vitamins, electrolytes, amino acid, lipids, glycercides and carbohydrates.” Suleiman Egeh.
“Quotes “
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” Malcolm X
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein
“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” Aristotle
“America is the best half-educated country in the world. “Nicholas M. Butler
“An educated man is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style.”Alan K. Simpson
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
Mahatma Gandhi-The great sage and freedom of all times
“Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.” Dr. Martin Luther King
“Education will do what cheap and shallow talk failed to achieve.”
“Making use of time to the minute is one of the basic rules to success.”
Introduction
Preeminent, sterling, and pioneering university located in the beautiful Amoud valley to the east of the old city of Borama. That is Amoud University, an institution founded in the back drop of a turbulent period, just several years after; the democratic forces led by the SNM just toppled a destructive fascist dictator called Siyad Barre. The University campus is the in a lush green valley crisscrossed by several year round streams. The areas are a small farming community. Over sixty years, this valley was the center of education. The construction of the VTC was successfully completed over there in 1942. That construction housed a type of community college called Vocational Training Center or (VTC). The VTC used to trained stenographers, accountants, military cadets, and police cadets. The VTC was existent since 1960. It was dismantled in 1960. The clerical part was transported to Hargeisa, both the teacher’s training and the military cadet part was part was taken to Mogad
ishu; the clerical part was transported to Hargeisa. What had happened at the time is mind boggling, whole institution of a country were dismantled and shipped to another country. That was one of the minor consequences of our naive gambling with our independence. The first 66 students have been enrolled in Amoud University in 1998. The university has only two faculties, education and business. Right now there are over 5,000 students in the school. The university has over eight faculties including the faculty of medicine and surgery. The first group of doctors has graduated in 2007. The university’s final tests were supervised by Kings Cross Medical College of London Great Britain that gives the curriculum and teaching assistance to the Amoud University Medical faculty.
Before I plunge deeply into main points here I would like to take the opportunity to say few cents about the recently raging conflict and misunderstanding in Amoud University. I strongly believe no conflict has to be overlooked or easy. I believe resolving some outstanding problems or perceived problems is healthy and the right thing to do, otherwise the problem cyclic If it exists, and will naturally keep coming back again and again. An resolved lingering problem will always summer below the surface, and the summering will ultimately reach the boiling point. That is something nobody wants. The lingering will continue and definitely be discussed in the wrong forums. Everybody knows the contribution of Amoud University to Somaliland education, and how it has raised their self-esteem for our youth, their parents, and the larger community. It does not trail blazed for Gadaboursi only, but for all Somalilanders and beyond, and I am sure it will pioneer more educational opportun
ities for young Somalilanders and others for that matter. Since its inception in 1997, it has graduated so many students. Moreover, in order to have access to higher education high school graduates used to travel thousands of minds.
Background Information
Why ancient Greeks lead in so many areas of educational, philosophy, architecture and military arenas?
The Greek Isles are as considered as the birthplace of Western intellectual life. Multiple things were said about education. No nation can attain or realize any kind of progress or development without education. The reason why ancient Greeks have once led the world in so many fields was education. They were so well-versed in learning philosophy, mathematics, logic Art and architecture. Again the reason Germany reached the pinnacle of its development during the first half of the 29th century was education. They produced science icons such as Albert Einstein, Warner Heisenberg, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, Hans Geiger, Alfred g, Hilbert, Riemann, Weierstrass, Ridicule, and others. At the start of the 20th century, Germany garnered fourteen of the first thirty-one Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, starting with Hermann Emil Fischer in 1901 and until Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius in 1931.
In the same token our young countries is moving in the speed of light when it comes to education when it comes of higher education. So far we have about ten universities already operational. The task now id s to improve the qualities of these existence Universities before we embark in the starting of new ones.
Early Writings
The earliest extant European literary works are the Iliad and the Odyssey, both written in ancient Greek probably before 700 BC, and attributed to Homer. Among other early epic poems, most of which have perished, those of Hesiod, the first didactic poet, remain. The poems dealing with mythological subjects and known as the Homeric Hymns are dated 800–300 BC Only fragments survive of the works of many early Greek poets, including the, Solon, Simonies elegists Tyrtaeus, Throngs of Amoroso. The most personal Greek poems are the lyrics of Alcaeus, Sappho and Anacreon. The Dorian lyric for choral performance, developed with Alcmene, Abacus , and Stesichorus , achieved perfection Pindar , Simonizes of Ceos , and Bacchylides .
With the spread of Christianity, Greek writing took a new turn, and much of the writing of the Greek Fathers of the Church is eloquent. Religion dominated the literature of the Byzantine Empire, and a vast treasure of writing was produced that is not generally well known to the West the most notable exception is the work of some historians (e.g., Procopius, Anna Commune , George Acropolis, and Emperor John VI ) and some.
Renaissance: Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus
“Renaissance” means rebirth. It refers especially to the rebirth of learning that began in Italy in the fourteenth century, spread to the north, including England, by the sixteenth century, and ended in the north in the mid-seventeenth century (earlier in Italy). During this period, there was an enormous renewal of interest in and study of classical antiquity.
Isaac Newton was born in 1642 in a manor house in Lincolnshire, England. His father had died two months before his birth. When Isaac was three his mother remarried, and Isaac remained with his grandmother. He was not interested in the family farm, so he was sent to Cambridge University to study.
After the death of the great scientists, and inventor Galileo, another great scientist called Isaac Newton was born. Newton was one of the greatest scientists of all times. During his life time Galileo had proved that the planets move around sun, and not the earth as people thought at the time. Isaac Newton became interested in the great discoveries of Galileo. Isaac thought the universe worked like a machine and that a few simple laws governed it. Just like Galileo, he realized that mathematics was the way to explain and prove those laws. Isaac Newton was one of the world’s great scientists because he took his ideas, and the ideas of earlier scientists, and combined them into a unified picture of how the universe works. He discovered gravity, and the three laws of motion. For almost three hundreds Newtonians work dominated classical physics.
Yet the Renaissance was more than a “rebirth.” It was also an age of new discoveries, both geographical (exploration of the New World) and intellectual. Both kinds of discovery resulted in changes of tremendous import for Western civilization. In science, for example, Copernicus (1473-1543) attempted to prove that the sun rather than the earth was at the center of the planetary system, thus radically altering the cosmic world view that had dominated antiquity and the middle ages. In religion, Martin Luther (1483-1546) challenged and ultimately caused the division of one of the major institutions that had united Europe throughout the middle Ages–the Church. In fact, Renaissance thinkers often thought of themselves as ushering in the modern age, as distinct from the ancient and medieval eras.
Study of the Renaissance might well center on five interrelated issues. First, although Renaissance thinkers often tried to associate themselves with classical remains and to disconnect themselves from the middle Ages, important continuities with their recent past, such as belief in the Great Chain of Being, were still much in evidence. Second, during this period, certain significant political changes were taking place. Third, some of the noblest ideals of the period were best expressed by the movement known as Humanism. Fourth, and connected to Humanist ideals, was the literary doctrine of “imitation,” important for its ideas about how literary works should be created. After that the reformation became something more profound and had a deeper impact on modern life. .
Renaissance thinkers and philosophers have associated themselves with the values of classical antiquity, especially as expressed in the newly rediscovered classics of literature, history, and ethical philosophy. On the contrary, they tended to detach themselves from works written in the middle ages, a historical period they looked upon rather negatively. According to them, the middle ages were set in the “middle” of two much more priceless historical epochs, antiquity and their own. Nevertheless, as modern scholars have indicated, exceedingly important continuities with the previous age still existed.
According to most modern philosophers, the origin of philosophy belongs to Socrates. He went to the Oracle at Delphi and the Gods told him he was the wisest man in Athens. Confused by this he went about town asking questions, for example he would ask a priest, “What is piety?” or a judge “What is justice?” He learned that until one admits he knows nothing, only then can he begin to learn. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, so Socrates is known as the father of philosophy. Unfortunately for him, and for mankind, he was convicted of corrupting the youth and sentenced to death. Plato and Aristotle were among his students.
Education plays a key role in life, without it any one could become discontented. Although some, like Bill Gates, dropped out of college and is content, a majority of the time educated people prosper; giving eager young minds the opportunity to fulfill their dreams. People who are well educated have a lot going for them— they could pursue a career in whichever field they dream. People who take education for allowed may not have as many things going for them, due to lack of knowledge. Uneducated people may have experience, and yes experience matters but it can only go so far. Knowledge can be gained from experience and if an educated person already has the knowledge, it ’ s almost as if they were on a treadmill of life going two times faster than an uneducated person. Due to a personal experience of observing friends drop out of school, and statistics, education seems to have a positive impact on ones career, and more importantly one ’ s life as a whole.
Education is the key to success and to open our minds to what can be in our lives.
Without education you have nothing in this world.
In this piece today, I would like to explain in detail the phenomenon that made the legendary German physicists Albert Einstein. Matter can be turned into energy, and energy into matter. According to the formula E=MC^2 matter, and energy are different forms of something that is the same. Matter can be converted into energy and the vice versa is true.
The famous discovery was formula called E=MC^2 that have revolutionized Newtonian physics or classical physics If you will:
(1). General relativity is a theory of the behavior of space and time
Prior to the 20th century all physics theories assumed space and time to be absolutes. Together they formed a background within which matter moved. The role of a physical theory was to describe how different kinds of matter would interact with each other and, by doing so, predict their motions. With the development of special and later general relativity theory in the early 20th century, the role of space and time in our theories of physics changed dramatically. Instead of being a passive background, space and time came to be viewed as dynamic actors in physics, capable of being changed by the matter within them and in turn changing the way that matter behaves.
In GR, space-time becomes curved in response to the effects of matter. I will discuss below what it means for space-time to be curved, but just to give a flavor of this idea I can note here that in a curved space-time the laws of Euclidean geometry no longer hold: the angles of a triangle do not in general add up to 180°, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is in general not , and so on. This curvature in turn affects the behavior of matter. In Newtonian physics a particle with nothing pushing or pulling it (no forces acting on it) will move in a straight line. In a curved space-time what used to be straight lines are now twisted and bent, and particles with no forces acting on them are seen to move along curved paths.
(2). General relativity is a theory of gravity
Newtonian theory was the dominant physics throughout the 20th century. In other words two massive bodies like the Earth and an apple were understood to exert a pull on each other as a result of the law of gravity. If an apple started out at rest, say just as it broke off from a tree, then gravity would cause it to move towards the Earth until it collided with it. Newton’s law of gravity explained in detail both the fall of apples, and also the orbit of the moon around the Earth, and the motions of the planets around the sun. In GR, a huge body like the sun causes the space-time around it to curve, and this curvature in turn will have an impact on the motion of the planets, compelling them to orbit around the sun.
In later sections I’ll discuss in more detail how GR describes results like falling apples and orbiting planets. For the most part the predictions of GR and Newtonian gravity are very similar. There are small differences that can and have been measured in the solar system, however, and to date all the data have matched the predictions of GR. Moreover, there are certain situations, like the vicinity of a black hole, where GR makes predictions drastically different from those of Newtonian theory. I will briefly discuss some of these later and talk about what evidence we have for some of the more exotic predictions of GR.
In short, GR is a theory in which gravity is described by saying that space and time are dynamics quantities that can curve in response to the effects of matter and can in turn alter the behavior of matter. Before I discuss GR in any greater depth, I need to talk more generally about the idea of curved spaces. The next section thus discusses what it means for space to be curved. In GR, however, it is not just space but space-time that is curved, and the following section discusses that idea. Using these ideas I then describe how gravity is viewed in GR. Having thus presented the basic ideas of GR, I go on to discuss a number of applications where GR gives results very different from those of Newtonian theory. In the conclusion I discuss some of the open questions remaining in our understanding of the nature of space and time.
For the sake of completeness, I can note here one other way of describing the content of GR, which is that GR is a theory of physics in arbitrary coordinate systems. The laws of physics that were known prior to GR, most notably Newtonian physics and special relativity, were only valid in a restricted set of coordinate systems known as inertial reference frames. The laws of GR are formulated in a way that is equally valid in any reference frame. In my sequel paper (in progress) I explore this idea in greater depth.
Space-time
In Newtonian physics space and time were viewed completely separately. Ask most people how many dimensions our world has, for example, and if they understand the question they will most likely answer three. In relativity theory, however, it is conceptually simpler to view time as a fourth dimension. We can’t picture a 4D world, so instead let’s imagine that we are one dimensional being. In other words we live and move only on a line. In that case we can picture space-time as a 2D surface, where the horizontal direction is space and the vertical direction is time. The motion of a particle in this 2D space-time traces out a curve, called a world line.
By, Suleiman Egeh freelance writer and a senior science instructor
soleimoneg@yahoo.com