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Therefore, nonzero, non-scalar quaternions, or positive scalar quaternions, have exactly two roots, while 0 has exactly one root (0), and negative scalar quaternions have infinitely many roots, which are the vector quaternions located on {} (), i.e., where the scalar part is zero and the vector part is located on the 2-sphere with radius .
In the same way the quaternions can be defined by introducing abstract symbols i, j, k which satisfy the rules i 2 = j 2 = k 2 = i j k = −1 and the usual algebraic rules except the commutative law of multiplication (a familiar example of such a noncommutative multiplication is matrix multiplication).
William Rowan Hamilton invented quaternions, a mathematical entity in 1843. This article describes Hamilton's original treatment of quaternions, using his notation and terms. Hamilton's treatment is more geometric than the modern approach, which emphasizes quaternions' algebraic properties. Mathematically, quaternions discussed differ from the ...
Like rotation matrices, quaternions must sometimes be renormalized due to rounding errors, to make sure that they correspond to valid rotations. The computational cost of renormalizing a quaternion, however, is much less than for normalizing a 3 × 3 matrix. Quaternions also capture the spinorial character of rotations in three dimensions.
In the nineteenth century, number systems called quaternions, tessarines, coquaternions, biquaternions, and octonions became established concepts in mathematical literature, added to the real and complex numbers. The concept of a hypercomplex number covered them all, and called for a discipline to explain and classify them.
In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative number system that extends the complex numbers.Quaternions and their applications to rotations were first described in print by Olinde Rodrigues in all but name in 1840, [1] but independently discovered by Irish mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space.
Spatial rotations in three dimensions can be parametrized using both Euler angles and unit quaternions. This article explains how to convert between the two representations. Actually this simple use of "quaternions" was first presented by Euler some seventy years earlier than Hamilton to solve the problem of magic squares. For this reason the ...
In mathematics, a versor is a quaternion of norm one (a unit quaternion).Each versor has the form = = + , =, [,], where the r 2 = −1 condition means that r is a unit-length vector quaternion (or that the first component of r is zero, and the last three components of r are a unit vector in 3 dimensions).