Square root of minus 1

[gregcropper]

So what IS the square root of minus 1 ?

[loudickson71]

1

[gregcropper]

loudickson.......does the fact that your answer box contains nothing suggest that you think that the answer is zero ? Surely not !

[stevie21]

i

[gen2]

aye, i

[fo3nix]

basically they couldn't think what the square root of a negative number would be, so they decided that they'd use their imagination.

so they decided to call it: i (as stevie21 and gen2 said), as it's an imaginary number.

but what happens when you try and combine something real (numbers you're already used to), with these new imaginary ones? Well, you get something a little complicated. So these are called complex numbers.

[tony1941]

Why do engineers use "j" when the original - and still used by mathematicians - was "i" ??

[stevie21]

as I should have posted earlier, (and fo3nix has since said), the square root of -1 is literally impossible but for at least one branch of theoretical mathematics it has proven helpful to create an answer to it so that other problems can be approached.

Now, anytime we encounter "the square root of minus one" in maths, instead of stopping in our tracks and abandoning the work, we just substitute " i " and continue. Remember, this only affects theoretical maths and isn't supposed to claim that calculating the square root of any minus number is literally possible. It's just a trick to avoid a dead end.

[mibn2cweus]

i get sqrt(-1)t!

The square root of minus 1 = i or -i.

[Space]

tony1941 : because the letter i is often used to designate electrcal current