Scientific American presents Everyday Einstein by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies. When you think of Albert Einstein, what do you think of?

Detecting gravity: Researchers have proposed an experiment that could detect the elusive graviton – a quantum of gravity – using quantum sensing. (Courtesy: Pikovski research group) According to ...

Scientists have spent decades trying to understand how gravity operates at its most basic scale. However, no theory has come close to fully explaining it. Now, though, a new theory could finally give ...

The photoelectric effect refers to what happens when electrons are emitted from a material that has absorbed electromagnetic radiation. Physicist Albert Einstein was the first to describe the effect ...

For his monumental work in transforming our understanding of gravity and spacetime, Albert Einstein won his sole Nobel Prize for something else: explaining the photoelectric effect. In the early 20th ...

In 1905, Albert Einstein showed that the photoelectric effect—the ability of metals to produce an electric current when exposed to light—could be explained if light is quantum, traveling in discrete ...