Uses and Applications of Prime Numbers

I already know... Right about now many of you are probably wondering "Okay, well how do prime numbers affect me??". Well these special numbers may affect your personal life a little more than you may think, in fact you use them every single day!

One of the most interesting applications of Prime Numbers is that of Cryptography. Who would have thought that this peculiar set of numbers would become a weapon of war?
But it's true some of the most sensitive military information in history have been protected by prime numbers. Prime numbers are great for cryptography and coding due to their apparent randomness, and they can be used to encrypt messages that then become very difficult to decipher(Primality in Cryptography).

For example the Enigma machine (shown below), used by the Germans in WWII to encode their messages, was based on prime numbers!

Another aspect of cryptography that we use every single day is called public key cryptography! This form of encoding/encrypting is used to protect our personal information every time we make a transaction through the internet!



Below I've included a helpful video that illustrates the importance of Prime Numbers in Public Key Cryptography, something that we all use on a daily basis!!