What Most People Get Wrong About Einstein's Famous Equation

It's practically the most famous formula in history. Every student knows it by heart, and nearly anyone can tell you who came up with it--with good reason: it's as profound as it is widely known, communicating a fundamental truth of the universe in a mere five characters. Everyone say it with me, it's: E=mc2 But how many of us actually know what this means? A lot of people think they do, but--as you might expect for a concept so often-repeated but infrequently explained--a startling number of pe...