An Indian-origin schoolboy named Pratap Singh, aged 15, has been conferred with the Institute of Physics Prize in the United Kingdom. He was awarded for conducting an experiment that verified an effect of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Pratap Singh, a student at The Perse School, Cambridge, has won the prize amount of 500 pounds along with the prestigious Institute of Physics Prize at the Big Bang Fair held at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. The Big Bang Fair attracted more than 200 students aged 11 to 18 years who explained their projects to thousands of visitors.

Pratap Singh used two Geiger-Muller tubes to observe cosmic-ray muons in his study. According to Pratap, unless time dilation occurs the two tubes should not reach earth in detectable numbers. After creating a mathematical model, he used a Raspberry Pi and some statistical analysis which disclosed that they track the model that was anticipated by Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity.

Tidbits

1. Albert Einstein was born in Germany and he developed the General Theory of Relativity.
2. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, a pivotal step in the evolution of quantum theory. 
3. Einstein was visiting the United States when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.
4. Einstein did not go back to Germany, because he was a Jew. He settled in the United States and became an American citizen in 1940.