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Re: IMAGINARY NUMBERS



Have your students had trigonometry yet? The first use of complex
numbers in physics is in alternating current electricity, as Vern
pointed out, but it will only be useful if your students have some
trig and perhaps some analytical geometry as well. Otherwise
complex numbers (which have imaginary components) are merely the
solutions to some algebraic equations, and until the physics is
done mostly such solutions are discarded as unphysical.

All of this is much clearer if geometric algebra (Clifford algebra)
is the fundamental algebra taught. That won't happen in my lifetime,
but maybe some day...

Leigh