I am sure that every single person who is reading this has heard of Albert Einstein in one way or another. You probably have seen his last name being used as a synonym of genius, smart, or other words to describe someone intelligent. Maybe, you’ve even heard of E=mc² as one of his biggest and most important achievements. But what do all of these things mean? There are way too many people who know about Einstein as a genius, but they don’t know why he’s so famous. There are at least a thousand people alive right now who have a higher IQ than Einstein. Einstein himself considered Niccola Tesla to be smarter than him. The reason Einstien is so famous is because of his contributions to humanity, which I’ll explain in this blog. More specifically, I’ll be explaining his two most important contributions to humanity that affect us every day.

The first, arguably the most important contribution is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Please note that this is an umbrella term that contains many sub-theories. With that being said, I think the biggest use of this theory is in GPS systems. Einstein discovered that gravity ever-so-slightly slow time down. (think microseconds). One of the components of GPS systems is that satellites need to have an extremely precise idea of time to get the location accurately. The time change by the lack of gravity that satellites experience becomes a big problem now. Luckily that difference is accounted for so we’ll be fine. But if Einstein hadn’t discovered that law, GPS wouldn’t be impossible. Next time you or your parents use GPS, remember that it’s Einstien and his imagination that helped make this possible. And yes, I meant it when I said his imagination. He sat for a while and thought up these theories. 

Another big contribution from Einstien was the discovery of the equation E=mc².  I won’t go into the details of the principles behind this equation or even what each of the variables means. I’ll instead go into the effect of this law. The effect of this law is that seemingly small objects contain an enormous amount of energy at an atomic level. Because of this law, a walnut has enough energy to power the entirety of New York City for around 52 days, though tapping that energy is only possible in certain elements as of right now.  The discovery of this is what allowed nuclear power to be invented. The most well-known effect of this is the invention of the nuclear bomb. The world might have been in some kind of war right now if countries weren’t scared about each other’s nukes. But there are other uses to this equation as well, such as nuclear power. France, for example, gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear power plants. Next time you hear about anything nuclear, remember that it’s Einstein who made it possible.

There are definitely more things that Einstein helped to discover. But these two things are by far the two most tangible. Einstein was no doubt a genius. But it’s disrespectful to him to only remember that him as some crazy smart guy. Because he’s one of the most important figures of the 20th century, perhaps even in history. There’s no telling of how this world would be(if it would even exist) without him. Thanks for reading my blog!