Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan started a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015. This initiative founded the Breakthrough Junior Challenge. Hillary Diane Andales explained the theory of relativity as a part of this project and was awarded $250,000.
The rules of the Breakthrough Challenge as stated on the website are:
“Students ages 13 to 18 from countries across the globe are invited to create and submit original videos (3 minutes in length maximum) that bring to life a concept or theory in the life sciences, physics or mathematics. The submissions are judged on the student’s ability to communicate complex scientific ideas in engaging, illuminating, and imaginative ways.”
A total of 11,000 students from 178 countries took part in the competition which began at the start of September 2017. 3,200 videos were shortlisted to 29 and finally, 15 videos made it to the finals. Hillary’s video was one of them and eventually bagged the prize.
The theory of relativity is something that most adults have problems understanding before they have done ample research on the topic but this teenager managed to cleverly explain it in a three minute YouTube video. She won a total of $400,000 in prizes which includes the $250,000 scholarship fund.
Einstein himself described the theory of relativity in 1979 as:
“It follows from the theory of relativity that mass and energy are both different manifestations of the same thing—a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average man. Furthermore, E=MC2, in which energy is put equal to mass multiplied with the square of the velocity of light, showed that a very small amount of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy… the mass and energy were in fact equivalent.”
He continued to say, “If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare I am a citizen of the world,” he once said Should my theory prove untrue, France will say I am a German and Germany will declare I am a Jew.”
However, the spotlight is on young Hillary now and her winning video was called “Relativity & The Equivalence of Reference Frames” and you can watch it here:
