Accepted Answer
The letters in any mathematical formula can stand for anything you want them to. When a scientist writes a formula or equation with variables in it, it's up to him to explain what each letter stands for.When a formula becomes popular and widely known for a long time, then often they stop explaining what the letters mean, since everybody has already seen it so many times.That's the case with this one. It's widely recognized as one of the fall-outs from Einstein's work in Relativity theory. In that case . . .'E' stands for energy'M' stands for mass'C' stands for the speed of light.and the formula says that the energy in a piece of mass is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light.That's what they mean IF this is Einstein's famous formula. But it doesn't necessarily have to be that. It could be the equation that tells you the total area of a quilt.'E' = the total area'M' = the number of squares in the quilt'C' = the length of each side of each little square.Whoever writes the equation has to tell you where it comes from, so that you have some notion of what the letters in it mean.
Suggested Answer
E=mc2 means the energy equals mass times the speed of light squared
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