ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Philip Woodward

Philip Woodward was a very smart man who lived a long time ago. He was born in 1919 and he died in 2009. When he was alive, he did a lot of important work in science and technology.

One of the things Philip Woodward is famous for is something called the "Pound-Rebka experiment." This was an experiment that helped to prove something called the "gravitational redshift." That might be a big word, but what it means is that when you are close to something that is very, very heavy (like a planet or a star), time will move a little bit slower for you. This is because the gravity of the heavy thing is pulling on time itself! Pretty cool, right?

Another thing that Philip Woodward is famous for is something called the "atomic clock." Before he invented this, people had to use things like the sun or the stars to figure out what time it was. But the atomic clock is soooooo much more accurate! It uses tiny little atoms to keep track of time. This helps us do things like make sure our cell phones and our computers are always saying the right time.

So, in short, Philip Woodward was a really smart person who helped us understand more about how time works and made it easier for us to keep track of time.