More fun than Mayonnaise... or at least equally fun... OK, it's less fun, but you're still reading...
How do you do explain 'maginary Numbers to someone who screams bloody murder when her toes gets near the numbers pond? With chocolate.
Checking out of the grocery store, you see a wrapper that says "Reese's Peanut Butter Cups".... how would someone make that candy bar? Simple. They would take two identical peanut butter cups and cram them into a wrapper. Not too hard, is it?
But you scan the shelf a little more and see a wrapper that says "Reese's Anti-gravity Livercoated Margarine Balls".... how would someone make that candy bar? They can't! RAGLMBs don't exist. They're an imaginary candy bar (Thank God!). However, based on the wrapper, we know that you would take two identical Anti-gravity Livercoated Margarine Balls and cram them into a wrapper.... just like we did with the Peanut Butter Cups. Even though packs of RAGLMBs don't exist, we can still figure out how they're made by using imaginary components.
And that's basically what mathematicians do. It was impossible to solve certain problems, so they invented imaginary numbers. Who said mathmaticians weren't creative?
Posted by hans1995 at June 8, 2005 09:25 AM | TrackBackTHANK YOU, GB! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I get it. And now I'll make another speedy retreat from the numbers pond and head straight to the nearest Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.
Posted by: sherman at June 8, 2005 05:03 PMI just imagined a brand new number... but then I realized it was actually 7.
Posted by: Jerry at June 9, 2005 09:06 AMIt certainly looks like I'm not going to increase my number of comments through a "mathemagic" category.
Posted by: GenerationBob at June 9, 2005 09:20 AM