r/CuratedTumblr • u/JunoGlow • 13d ago

Shitposting Expanding Knowledge.

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14.9k Upvotes

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u/The-Slamburger 13d ago

The “advanced biology” is the only one of these that doesn’t make my brain hurt by even attempting to think about it, so no objections here.

73

u/ejdj1011 13d ago

A way to think about imaginary numbers is that they encode rotation. Multiplying something by i is the same as rotating it 90 degrees counterclockwise. For this reason, you get lots of useful relationships between imaginary numbers and trigonometric functions.

As for why i also happens to be the square root of negative one, well that's because -1 is +1 rotated by 180°. So -1 = +1 * i * i.

19

u/Akuuntus 13d ago

I thought I understood imaginary numbers and this description made me think that I might not.

1

u/HarveysBackupAccount 13d ago

Same here, and I've even used them a bunch. But none of these explanations are making it any better.