:I agree with you - I don't think that this way of trying to make the formula plausible works.
:BTW: while we are posing and answering questions - what about [[#A few questions for Aschlafly regarding the experiment of Cockcroft and Walton]]? I'm still waiting for your answer! --[[User:AugustO|AugustO]] ([[User talk:AugustO|talk]]) 17:53, 8 August 2015 (EDT)
The PBS statement quoted above, with it's "ultimate energy" stuff and "will be revealed" stuff, is indeed rather stupid. That whole section needs to be cleaned up. But you need to be aware that this equation, like it or not, claptrap or not, correct or not, experimentally verified or not, theoretically proven or not, looms very large in the public's consciousness. (And I might add, the name of Einstein is widely associated with it, which is the point I made recently that you reverted.)
Most of what the public knows about it is ludicrously oversimplified and just wrong. The popular notion that I find most overwhelmingly stupid is the business about "it unlocks the secret of the atomic bomb". But the other quotes are nearly as bad.
The "Description for the layman" section and the immediately following "Popularization of E=mc²" are really just a synopsis of this foolishness. I think that material needs to be in the article, but put into perspective as oversimplified popularization. I don't agree with the edit comment "this is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. Phrases like 'universally connected in the public's consciousness' are non-encyclopedic, and speculative at best." The public's consciousness of this equation is an important part of an article about it, unless you are writing a serious scientific journal to be read only by scientists. We need to acknowledge that it's a "meme", and try to put that into perspective.
The "Description for the layman" section gives four popular quotes, out of an article containing ten quotes. Of the ten quotes, only one is actually lucid, straightforward, and factually correct; ane that is the one (not one of the four) by Sheldon Glashow. The others are what one would expect if you ask scientists to explain it for laymen.
Assuming that it's OK with you for the page to acknowledge that it's well known in society at large, I'd like to leave the "Description for the layman" section in, with a prefatory note that it is extremely widely misunderstood, and that attempts to explain it to the general public almost invariably fall flat. Then give four examples as before, but adding Glashow and removing Arkani-Hamed. I'd also like to leave in the reference to the PBS article, but choose a much better quote than that "ultimate energy" nonsense. And the "energy it carried would be proportional to its mass times 100 [that is, v] squared" stuff is just plain wrong. And stupid. And unhelpful.
So can you give me a couple of days to think about this? Unless you want the whole "E=mc^2 in the public's consciousness" material to go away, in which case I won't bother.
[[User:SamHB|SamHB]] ([[User talk:SamHB|talk]]) 21:42, 8 August 2015 (EDT)