[FRIAM] The Strange Numbers That Birthed Modern Algebra

[Steve Smith]

Tom -

Great find!   I'd never seen the "belt trick" animated like this...

SimTable's progress finally has demanded widespread adoption of
quaternions for the "traditional" reason of gimbal lock but with other
side-benefits here and there.    This has lead to a strong spate of most
of the team trying to "wrap their heads around" this abstraction which
reminded me that MY head has never fully wrapped itself into the implied
Minkowski space, even if I feel like I've "tumbled" through 4D and
higher (ala conversations with Dave West on such phantasms) in my VR and
Lucid Dream experiences... I can't say I was truly experiencing a
complex vector space. 

Hise's ( the animator/illustrator in your link) other animations are
also helpful:

    Gimbal - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRvuIuSkL6Y

I don't believe the connection is anything more than superficial but I,
like many here have spent a lifetime fighting tangled power cords,
hoses, bungees, and ropes, and watching things tangle, and then untangle
this way is pretty familiar/inspirational!   I was surprised to discover
that the Dirac Belt Trick is homomorphic to professor Caractacus Potts'
plate prestidigitatoin.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc9h6FC6QgU

(odd factiod, did anyone know that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang started life
as an Ian Fleming children's book with none other than Roald Dahl
providing much of the movie-versions set and object design?)

ramble,

 - Steve

> The 19th-century discovery of numbers called “quaternions” gave
> mathematicians a way to describe rotations in space, forever changing
> physics and math.
>
> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-strange-numbers-that-birthed-modern-algebra-20180906/?fbclid=IwAR32bY8dnkg_hCYImiFlJgJL3g_r1CR9Eos4V_YEPcb7bvYJWlTe-8-83fY  
>
> TJ
>
> ============================================
> Tom Johnson - tom at jtjohnson.com <mailto:tom at jtjohnson.com>
> Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
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