[nthcolumn]

I have no idea what these people are talking about but I always thought as a small child that c should = 1. That square really bugged me - why squared, why not cubed or halved or more realistically some bally awkward number... Sounds like fun this numerical relativity!

[Chronos]

It's squared because energy is work, work is force times displacement (distance), force is mass times acceleration, acceleration is velocity per time, and velocity is vector distance per time. So you get:

mass × distance × ((distance ÷ time) ÷ time)

mass × distance^2 ÷ time^2

mass × (distance ÷ time)^2