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  • hydroptic@sopuli.xyzOPtoScience Memes@mander.xyzThis feels wrong. I love it.
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    4 months ago

    Far as I understand it (which is not very far), i is a scalar even if you take it to be the complex number 0 + i. Just by itself i is the imaginary unit that’s defined as i = sqrt(-1) (edit: or, well, the solution to x² + 1 = 0, but same difference), and nothing in that definition says it’s a vector quantity.

    Even though complex numbers do extend real numbers into a 2D plane doesn’t mean they’re automatically vectors, and – again, as far as I’ve understood things – they’re still treated as single entities, ie. scalars. i by itself isn’t a complex number I think, though.

    The joke is that i² = -1 by definition, so i² + 1² = 0²

    Edit: eg. nothing on the imaginary number wiki page implies that the imaginary unit is not a scalar value