In January I wrote a piece titled “5 Physics Equations Everyone Should Know.” Lots of you weighed in with your own nominations, and there were plenty of good suggestions. So I’ve decided to do a ...

Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism and the Euler equation top a poll to find the greatest equations of all time. Robert P Crease discusses the results of his reader survey First among equals – ...

Estimating things that exist is generally easy, but when it comes to estimating things that do not exist, it’s more difficult. This is something physicists from Poland and the UK are well aware of. To ...

More than a century before quantum mechanics was born, Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton stumbled onto an idea that would quietly foreshadow one of the deepest truths in physics. While ...

E = mc 2 is probably the most recognized physics equation among the general public, beating out Newton's Second Law of motion, F = ma. Despite that recognition by the outside world, E = mc 2 is hardly ...

E = mc 2 may be the most quotidian equation in physics. Everyone’s heard of it and it’s been proven time and again. Did you convert mass into energy? Go tell it to the stars, whose light is generated ...

The currents of the oceans, the roiling surface of the sun, and the clouds of smoke billowing off a forest fire—all are governed by the same laws of physics and give rise to a complex phenomenon known ...

In It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science, Graham Farmelo assembled and edited essays on 11 great equations of the 20th century. Six are from physics: E = hf, E = mc 2, Einstein’s ...

In 2017, Roger Guimerà and Marta Sales-Pardo discovered a cause of cell division, the process driving the growth of living beings. But they couldn’t immediately reveal how they learned the answer. The ...