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#1 2007-02-08 20:05:33
- MathsIsFun
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- Registered: 2005-01-21
- Posts: 7,694
Imaginary Confusion
You may be familiar with this property of square roots:
For example:
But with imaginary numbers:
Why is this ? ?
"The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ..." - Leon M. Lederman
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#2 2007-02-09 16:41:55
- ganesh
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- Registered: 2005-06-28
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Re: Imaginary Confusion
MathsIsFun,
The square of (-1) is 1. The square root of 1 is ±1. Since the square root of (-1) is represented by i, and it is known that i²=-1, it may be intially baffling that -1=1, but a square root always has two values, positive and negative. In this case, since -1 is also one of the roots, the equation is perfectly right! 
It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge - Enrico Fermi.
Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.
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#3 2007-02-09 19:04:26
- MathsIsFun
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- Registered: 2005-01-21
- Posts: 7,694
Re: Imaginary Confusion
Awww... I was hoping to cause confusion.
"The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God ..." - Leon M. Lederman
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