how do imaginary numbers work, and what are they used for
In: 7
So the square root operation basically asks, “what number multiplied by itself equals this number?” So the square root of 25 is 5, because 5×5 = 25. But what happens when you take the square root of a negative number? Let’s try -25. What number multiplied by itself equals -25? Well 5×5 = +25 and -5 x -5 is also equal to positive 25. But not -25. So it can be concluded that you cannot take the square root of a negative number, realistically. However there are situations where being able to do this is helpful, so mathematicians made up a number, simply called i, that is defined as the square root of -1. So now we can deal with negative square roots. For example, in the case of -25, the square root would simply be 5i.
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