and also ELI16 what a an imaginary number is and how it works in real life
In: Mathematics
One thing that I didn’t see in a ***very quick skim*** of top-level comments was the concept of extending the x-y plane into the third dimension. Other answers that I saw have done a pretty good job of getting to the point of rotation and periodicity, but another application for the imaginary (complex, really) set is for 3-dimensional physical modelling of the solution to a function.
Whenever you go to Wolfram Alpha and get a solution to a function, and the graph extends into the third dimension, that’s because of non-real solutions to the function – in this case, specifically complex solutions.
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