The next time someone doesn't fully appreciate your sailing compendium of knowledge and skills, especially if they try to tell you it's not rocket science, you might explain how high level sailing actually is. Maybe it's even more difficult than rocket science. Case in point: Einstein capsized his sailboat and had to be rescued. The genius who understood physics better than anyone else alive may not have understood everything he needed to know to keep his sailboat upright. So there!
I learned this tidbit recently after happening upon the obituary of a man named Don Duso. In the 1940s Duso helped rescue Einstein after he capsized his sailboat on Saranac Lake in upstate New York. I hadn't even known Einstein sailed. But it only stands to reason that the man who discovered relativity by reveling in "thought experiments" would enjoy sailing--and that he might push a small sailboat to its limit while contemplating the complex interactions of energy and mass relative to the speed of wind. E=mw2?
It's cool to think about this as your boat heels to the wind and the bow wave sings along your hull and you slip along the space-time continuum. Sailing is as close to the alternative universes of contemporary physics as many of us will ever experience. And imagine having a beer with Ol' Al back in the clubhouse after a fine day on the water and shooting the breeze about what it all means. Heavens!
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I happen to have the privilege of having one of Einstein contemporaries, crew member (on Dr. Einstein sailboat in Germany) and drinking buddy. He had many stories about them sailing and, of course, having a few (or more than a few) beers afterward.
But the formula describing the energy availble to a sail from the wind is actually:
e = one half x mass x velocity (wind speed) squared
Einstein’s famous formula:
e = mass x speed of light squared
refers to the total conversion of matter into energy