Reading comprehension Home Exercise- 19 PASSAGE A

The year 2005 was celebrated the world over as the centenary of the discovery of the special theory by Albert Einstein. Although Einstein published three major results during 1905, he became famous only 14 years later, or after November 6, 1919. The Einstein story is an absorbing account of how a scientific achievement caught the popular imagination and made international headlines.

It all began with Isaac Newton, who, while propounding his universal law of gravitation, wondered whether like all material objects in the universe, light is subject to gravitational attraction. Would a ray of light skirting a massive body, bend its path? This was the question Newton posed, but did not answer, perhaps because he felt that the effect, if any, would be too small to measure with the techniques available to him.

 After proposing special relativity. Einstein undertook the more ambitious task of producing a general theory of relativity that incorporated in it the phenomenon of gravity. His early attempts led him to the conclusion no different form Soldner’s so far as the bending of light was concerned. By 1911, he felt   confident of his new theory and urged astronomers to verify it. The astronomers. Too, were by this time confident of being able to make the required measurements. This meant checking if the direction of a star changed slightly when it was passing behind the sun. But how does one star so close to the Sun? The answer is, when the sun is totally eclipsed.

Total solar eclipses are rare events visible from very limited zones on the Earth. In 1912, Argentinian astronomers went to Brazil to make the measurements, only to be thwarted by a cloud sky. A second attempt by German astronomers in 1914 to observe the eclipse in Crimea was prevented by the onset of the First World War. Nevertheless, these aborted attempts turned out to be fortunate from Einstein’s point of view.

By 1915 he realized that he had made a mistake in his calculations and the revised theory, now called the general theory of relativity, gave an answer that was double what he and got earlier; that is a bending angle twice that given by Soldner based on Newton’s theory.

General relativity was a highly mathematical theory, beyond the grasp of most astronomers. Very few scientists at the time fully appreciated its notions of curved space and time. Fortunately for Einstein, though, there was one astronomer who did: Arthur Stanley Eddington at Cambridge, England, Eddington pressed for an expedition to measure this effect during the eclipse due in 1919. For better chance of success, two spots were proposed for observation, one in Sobral in Brazil and the other in the island of Principe in Spanish Guinea in Africa. Eddington, a Quaker, faced the hurdle of possible conscription and detention, but his colleagues made sure that did not happen. 

The war ended in 1918, leaving very little time for completing the preparations. The team going to Sobral led by Greenwich astronomer Crommelin had taken large 10-inchlenses for accurate observations. However, the two makeshift telescopes made from them developed technical problems and in the end Crommelin had to fall back on a four-inch telescope. Eddington had opted for Principe as it had a better weather record, but it turned rainy and cloudy on the day. Fortunately, the cloud cover cleared at the right time for Eddington to take the necessary photographs. He needed to take some photographs of the star-field after the experiment for comparison but couldn’t because a local strike of steamship operators forced him to return home early. 

Despite all these problems, the data were analyzed and presented on November 6, 1919 at the Royal Society in London, to a crowded hall of scientists against the backdrop of a portrait of Isaac Newton. Would the results show him (and Soldner) to be right or will the new (and weird) theory of Einstein be favoured?  The suspense was broken by Astronomer Royal Sir Frank Dyson whose account, followed by reports from Eddington and Cromnielin, upheld Einstein’s prediction. The audience felt the thrill of history being made.

1.       Why did Newton not study the hypothesis he had proposed?

A.      Because the First World War happened when his observations were to be verified.

B.      Because his contemporaries were not able to verify it.

C.      Because soldner had already made certain similar observations in the area

D.      Because he felt the techniques available with him would not be able to measure the small effect’.

2.       Why does the author call the earlier aborted attempts to verify light deviance as fortunate?

A.      Einstein wanted to make a more detailed study of relativity

B.      The other scientist  were not well equipped to verify his observation

C.      Because it gave time to Einstein to correct his mistake.

D.      War World restricted the movement of people.

3.       What is the central theme of the article?

A.      The story of finding proof for Einstein’s theory

B.      To illustrate the comparison between soldner’s and Einstein’s’ observation regarding the bending of light.

C.      To emphasize the fact how hard scientists have to work to verity an observation

D.      To appreciate the genius of Albert Einstein

Answer:

1.       D  Refer to paragraph 2

2.       C   the passage talks about the whole sequence of events which hampered the verification of the earlier observation and the fault in his earlier study. Einstein got time to review and correct his observation.

3.       A  The passage is not about how Einstein deduced the theory but about how it was verified by the other scientists.