The World's Most Beautiful Equations? 137
music4l numb3rs asks: "'An exhibition of the world's most beautiful equations...and some of the ugliest ones too' is how the artist Justin Mullins describes his upcoming show in London. He's exhibiting a number of old favourites such as Maxwell's equations and Euler's relation plus some I've not come across such as entanglement. As for ugliness, he points to the four color theorem. My question to contemplate over the holiday period is: what do Slashdot readers think are the most beautiful equations, and the most ugly ones too?"
e^(i*pi) = -1 (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I vote for... (Score:3, Insightful)
My vote is for the Einstein field equation [wikipedia.org]. Briefly stated: the curvature of spacetime is proportional to its mass/energy content. Very pretty.
Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (Score:2, Insightful)
The beauty is in the proof. (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, an ugly one would be an equation that's long and complex with just as long and complex a proof.
Just my $0.02.