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?"
Does it really matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
From an infinate number of maps to 633 maps. The graph its like browsing through freshmeat or Wikipedia and discovering a world of variety and viewpoints. (sorry it reality does not meet some your expectations of a more "beautiful" number such as 0, 1 or 1,000)
Ugly? I find the the simple formulas. Try explaing what these mean to a child without resorting to "Its because its by definition..." (eg. ALEPH ONE) or having to explain some really complex background on the subject (STARBIRTH, what does pi have to do with this? What is with using the Boltzmann constant?).
This has been asked before... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:e^(i*pi) = -1 (Score:3, Interesting)
1 = 2... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:e^(i*pi) = -1 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:e^(i*pi) = -1 (Score:5, Interesting)
No no no.
e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0
There. Fixed your equation. Now it contains all five principal numbers: e, i, pi, 1, and 0.
What about chemistry (Score:2, Interesting)
CH4 + 2O2 --> CO2 + 2H2O
1+3+3=7 (Score:2, Interesting)
Lagrange's Theorem (Score:3, Interesting)