Fooji...

After reading your blog, I have only one thought in mind; that is to respond! principle of relativity is still being both defended and defied until today. generally, einstein and many of the early modern physicists created a whole new paradigm of human thinking in this world. they taught humans not to respect and trust fully on existing formulas and theories. although those abtract equations or findings might seem perfect, there are still a lot of rooms to explore.

einstein, planck, bohr and many others studied hard to disprove Newton's findings and in fact, they divided the field of physics into two; the classical physics and the modern physics. we were all very prone and amazed about physics during our schooldays, particularly in classical fields like mechanics, dynamics, kinematics, momentum, force, energy with formulas like F=ma, etc. how shallow we were when we extol Newton and not knowing the works of modern physicists in our own era.

bear in mind that not even one should disparage Newton even though some of his findings have weaknesses. Newton being the father of calculus is a fantastic role model for us to realise that success is not merely measured by money alone. in fact, successful in wisdom or knowledge is far greater. don't you think so?

the core of modern physics is fundamentally quantum mechanics. if you could remember again the time we were studying physical chemistry in form 6, and how terribly annoying and hard it was to understand the basic of quanta energy with all those mysterious lyman series, bohr model, planck constant, it would be times harder for us to understand or rather many times greater for us to amaze over some of the latest findings and equations by richard feynman, erwin schroedinger etc.

in the year 2000, when we sat for our stpm, if you still remember, an essay question about polymers came out in chemistry paper 2. at that same year, hideki shirakawa, heeger and macdiarmid were nobel prize winners in chemistry for their discovery and development of conductive polymers! but if you care to ask around, i am sure many malaysian university students wouldn't care much about such things anymore.

i have to agree with you that something is wrong with our education. we were not trained and taught to have the minds and burning desire to pursue a career in research and development in science. again "There are genius-es around, just that the environment does not promote the growth of minds...." getting a chance to study at princeton and meeting nash would be a fabuluous experience, how much more becoming someone like him!

if you plan to read more about science for pleasure, do go and read about Fourier. i was having lots of troubles doing mathematics with his formulas and series in my digital signal processing course. reading about him, you will realise how great is he that his formula or equation is so widely used in almost every single of today's engineering application. try to catch up with automata theory, nanotechnology, and the lives of nobel winners! haha :)

by the way, do you know that many european countries are actually using nuclear power as their main source for energy (electricity)? check out Areva of France. what more you have to say about tokyo university entrance exams? truly, to them, knowledge is not about studying or rather reading all the books and answer all the questions correctly, but more on developing a passion and love of learning (discovering) and use it rationally, wisely and analytically to produce own knowledge and solve problems.