Sarah Albee - Albert Einstein: A Curious Mind

Albert Einstein asked
a lot of questions.
He was a curious kid.
But even after he grew up,
he kept on asking questions.
He never lost his sense of wonder.

Albert was born in Germany.
His father was an engineer.
His mother was a musician.
When Albert was still a baby,
they moved from a small town
to a big city.

Little Albert did not speak
until he was nearly three years old.
But his loving parents knew
their son was gifted.

When Albert was about four,
his father gave him a compass.
The compass fascinated Albert.
What invisible force
made the needle point north?

Albert began to learn the violin.
He loved it.
Music helped him think.
He played for the rest of his life.

At school, Albert was a star student
in math and science.
He was not as strong
in other subjects.
One of Alberts teachers told him
he would never amount to anything.

Alberts classes were dull.
The teachers did not want students
to ask questions.
Albert daydreamed a lot.

When Albert was about twelve,
a grown- up friend gave him a book.
It was all about geometry.
Albert read the whole thing
and solved every problem.
Soon he knew more than the friend.

At sixteen, Albert took an exam
to get into a college in Switzerland.
He scored high in math and science.
He failed the other parts.
One year later,
he took the test again and passed.

Albert kept asking questions.
He questioned rules.
(This annoyed his teachers.)
He even questioned laws
including the laws of physics.
To rest his brain,
he played the violin.
Beautiful harmony pleased him.
It may have helped him understand
the harmony of the universe.

Albert Einstein started a family.
He wanted a teaching job,
but he couldnt find one.
And he needed money.
So he got a job in an office.
It gave him time to think.
What is light? What is energy?

When he wasnt at work,
Albert kept on thinking.
What is time?
Do atoms and molecules exist?
(Not everyone thought so.)
He had a childlike sense of wonder
at how nature worked.

Einstein did not have a laboratory
to perform his experiments.
So he pictured them in his mind.
He called them
thought experiments.

In 1905, Einstein turned twenty- six.
He published four articles that year.
They explained many mysteries
about the universe.
They changed science forever.

Four years later,
Einstein was offered a job
at a university.
Today Einstein is best known
for his famous equation: E = mc2.
The equation helps explain
his special theory of relativity.

Years later, when Einstein was forty,
his theory was confirmed
by other scientists.
That made him famous.

In the 1930s, Hitler ruled Germany.
Jewish people were not safe there.
Einstein was Jewish.
He and his family moved to the US.
Then World War II started.

Einstein hated war.
But he knew Hitler must be stopped.
Some of his ideas were used
by other scientists
to build bombs and weapons.

Albert Einstein loved kids.
He shared their joy and curiosity
about the world.
He never stopped asking questions.
Imagination is more important
than knowledge, he said.