Don’t worry if you do not understand many of these theories. I’m not entirely sure I understand them, either!

Even as a teenager, Einstein was coming up with theories on things people tend to take for granted- time, light, and space.

The average idea about light was that it was there so you did not trip in the dark.. Einstein of course was not satisfied with the average answer, and was constantly asking questions that teachers couldn’t answer, which, as I have listed on the page titled Early Life, managed to get him kicked out of school.

Any person who has any job that involves lasers has Einstein to thank for their job. Einstein found that light passed through a substance could stimulate the emission of more light- the theory at the heart of the laser.

Nearly everyone has heard the theory E=mc2, but few understand the actual meaning.

E stands energy, M stands for mass, and C2 is a representation of the speed of light. Therefore, energy equals the speed of light. Einstein understood this (unlike many scientists of his time). Einstein also understood that this could be used to make an extremely devastating bomb, and wrote President Roosevelt in 1939. For further information on the subject of the atomic bomb, see Atomic Bomb.

Einstein had a number of things to mull over, one of which was this: say you are playing with a Matchbox car. You push it across the floor, and it zooms along at two miles an hour. Then say that you are in a train going 100mph. You get on the floor of he train, and push the car along at two miles an hour again. Because you are on the train, the car is not going at 100 mph, nor two mph. It is going 102 mph!