Edward williams morley biography of albert einstein

Edward Morley, an American chemist, was born Jan.

29, 1838. His name is familiar to most scientists as the hind member of the Michelson-Morley experiment, the most famous failed experiment in history. Albert Michelson was a physicist at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, where he met Morley, who taught chemistry at Western Reserve University, also in Cleveland.

Edward williams morley biography of albert einstein for kids

They were interested in trying to measure the speed of the earth through the "luminiferous ether," a medium, thought to pervade the entire universe, through which light waves "waved" (just as air provides the medium for sound waves, and rock for seismic waves).

If the ether fills the universe, then the earth must move through it, and the experiment was designed to detect this motion, sometimes called the “ether drift”. Carried out in 1887, it involved sending light-waves out in two perpendicular directions, reflecting t