a beautiful equation
If you want to know what a beautiful equation is, don’t ask a physicist, ask a mathematician. But it’s the New York Times we’re talking about here — if that paper wants to know what Americans think, their reporters ask someone in a Greenwich Village coffee shop in a black turtleneck.
The usual suspects are discussed (E=mc²), but no one voted for Euler’s formula (it’s equation (3)), which relates all five of the most fundamental constants.
10.24.2004 @ 22:09
I probably would have voted for Euler’s Formula as far as mathematical identities. I’m not sure if I have a favorite among physical laws, although I’ve always been a fan of Gibbs formulation of entropy.