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Matt Collings

Andrew Thompson

Greg Lanning

Beautiful Equations

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Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

14/12/2010

BBC Four - Beautiful Equations

Matt Collings looks for the beauty and elegance in the most famous scientific equations.

Art critic Matt Collings explores the most famous equations in science and realises that concepts of beauty and elegance have been used by many scientists to advance their work.

Artist and writer Matt Collings takes the plunge into an alien world of equations. He asks top scientists to help him understand five of the most famous equations in science, talks to Stephen Hawking about his equation for black holes and comes face to face with a particle of anti-matter. 

Along the way he discovers why Newton was right about those falling apples and how to make sense of E=mc2. As he gets to grips with these equations he wonders whether the concept of artistic beauty has any relevance to the world of physics.

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