Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Date: 2000/04/27

> b)When I have wide equations (and I have some VERY wide ones),
> traditionally I've used:
>
> \begin{figure*}
> \begin{equation}
> ...
> \end{equation}
> \end{figure*}
>
> This works great for technical papers, and lets me have huge equations
> that span the columns.
>
> Can I use this same trick and get equations that are very huge
> (something like 15 inches) across, that span both of my "columns"?

You can, but why not try the multicol package? This allows you to switch between different numbers of columns in the middle of your text. You could do something like

first line      third line
second line     fourth line

a very large equation

fifth line      seventh line
sixth line      eighth line

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{multicol}
\begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{2}
first line\\
second line\\
third line\\
fourth line
\end{multicols}
\[
  \mbox{a very long equation}
\]
\begin{multicols}{2}
fifth line\\
sixth line\\
seventh line\\
eighth line
\end{multicols}
\end{document}

Thomas Lotze