It was a pleasure to read that again. It was a paper that changed the world 100 years ago. The interesting thing is that, until page 13, it does not require much more mathematics than what is taught in high school... It DOES require an understanding of the physics to understand WHY the math MEANS anything....

I wonder if Johannes will read it, and if he does will he realize that E=mc^2 started out as:

W=mc2*(1/(1-v2/c2).5 -1)

Being able to identify the terms in an equation is NOT the same as understanding the equation. It makes as much sense as saying "Here is my understanding of the book "Moby Dick": It starts with the letter/symbol "C" followed by the letter/symbol "a" followed by the letter/symbol "l" followed by the letter/symbol "l" followed by the letter/symbol "m" followed by the letter/symbol "e" followed by the letter/symbol "I" followed by the letter/symbol "s" followed by the letter/symbol "h" followed by the letter/symbol "m" followed by the letter/symbol "a" followed by the letter/symbol "e" followed by the letter/symbol "l" followed by the letter/symbol "." which I understand to mean the end of a sentence.

You HAVE to understand the context, and you have to have the knowledge required to understand it...

From your link:

Take, for example, the reciprocal electrodynamic action of a magnet and a conductor. The observable phenomenon here depends only on the relative motion of the conductor and the magnet, whereas the customary view draws a sharp distinction between the two cases in which either the one or the other of these bodies is in motion. For if the magnet is in motion and the conductor at rest, there arises in the neighbourhood of the magnet an electric field with a certain definite energy, producing a current at the places where parts of the conductor are situated. But if the magnet is stationary and the conductor in motion, no electric field arises in the neighbourhood of the magnet. In the conductor, however, we find an electromotive force, to which in itself there is no corresponding energy, but which gives rise—assuming equality of relative motion in the two cases discussed—to electric currents of the same path and intensity as those produced by the electric forces in the former case.

Examples of this sort, together with the unsuccessful attempts to discover
any motion of the earth relatively to the “light medium,” suggest that the phenomena of electrodynamics as well as of mechanics possess no properties corresponding to the idea of absolute rest. They suggest rather that, as has already been shown to the first order of small quantities, the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference for which the equations of mechanics hold good.