Post B5BUVdTvOlMyCCzjay by ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #B5BUVd9ibtCrBXXb6G by ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
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       Kinda funny, I was thinking about the idea of explaining imaginary numbers to high school students by saying "actually, there's no magic. You can do the whole thing using only reals." But then basically you have to be like "x^2+1=0" doesn't appear to have a solution until POOF, a rotation matrix appears. Which is maybe more confusing?
       
 (DIR) Post #B5BUVdLlt4qbmvBDt2 by Paradox@raru.re
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       @ZachWeinersmith I think about imaginary numbers as combining with real numbers to make 2D numbers.They're not imaginary, the name just stuck cuz somebody was weirded out by them.Might be a bit off.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5BUVdTvOlMyCCzjay by ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
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       Like is "there's this thing called i and it's 'imaginary' but we can use it like any other number" more or less intuitive than "you're sitting here doing algebra and suddenly a number explodes into 4 numbers"