fossilesque@mander.xyzM to Science Memes@mander.xyzEnglish · 1 year agoImaginary friends.mander.xyzimagemessage-square18fedilinkarrow-up1394arrow-down139
arrow-up1355arrow-down1imageImaginary friends.mander.xyzfossilesque@mander.xyzM to Science Memes@mander.xyzEnglish · 1 year agomessage-square18fedilink
minus-squarejoneskind@beehaw.orglinkfedilinkEnglisharrow-up19·1 year agoThe fact that you can’t solve any real life electro-magnetism problem without them kinda put an end to that complex shaming nonsense. Yet there are still people to miss the absolute poetry of their story. In 1545, an Italian genius called Gerolamo Cardano was pissed he couldn’t solve square root of negative number. « Fine! I’ll make it myself » he said, before sending everyone to hell. He then invented an imaginary number i whose square would be -1. It wasn’t until centuries later that another famous genius named Leonhard Euler found a practical use of those numbers. Without those numbers we would still be living like 1800´s peons.
minus-squaredriving_crooner@lemmy.eco.brlinkfedilinkEnglisharrow-up9·1 year ago In 1545, an Italian genius called Gerolamo Cardano was pissed he couldn’t solve square root of negative number. Iirc, it was while trying to solve cubic polynomials, that he found out that accepting the existence of sqrt(-1) let him solve them.
minus-squaresj_zero@lotide.fbxl.netlinkfedilinkarrow-up2arrow-down1·1 year agoIt’s sorta strange that complex numbers seem to be basically used as an ersatz coordinate system.
The fact that you can’t solve any real life electro-magnetism problem without them kinda put an end to that complex shaming nonsense.
Yet there are still people to miss the absolute poetry of their story.
In 1545, an Italian genius called Gerolamo Cardano was pissed he couldn’t solve square root of negative number.
« Fine! I’ll make it myself » he said, before sending everyone to hell.
He then invented an imaginary number i whose square would be -1.
It wasn’t until centuries later that another famous genius named Leonhard Euler found a practical use of those numbers.
Without those numbers we would still be living like 1800´s peons.
Iirc, it was while trying to solve cubic polynomials, that he found out that accepting the existence of sqrt(-1) let him solve them.
It’s sorta strange that complex numbers seem to be basically used as an ersatz coordinate system.