Expert: Bobby Soltani - 1/25/2005

Question
Dear Mr. Soltani-

I am a senior in secondary school in my second semester of algebra 2. I am having a difficult time understanding the concept of imaginary numbers. It's past basic arithmatic skills and into items that you are required to think hypothetically about. Can you explain to me why and in what cases imaginary numbers might be used? If I can link the concept to something such as chemical maths or an electrical engineering project I might be able to understand.

Thank you.

Michael Wood D.  

Answer
Hi Michael,

Imaginary numbers are not really imaginary.  They are used to represent things that can not be expressed by one number alone.  For instance, a vector has a magnitude and a direction.  In order to perform math operations, we may want to represent this vector as a complex number.  I have worked with imaginary numbers in signal processing applications.  I found a website that provides a good explanation for that application.  The link is below.  Let me know if you have other questions.  Good luck.

Bobby

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/info/signals/complex/cmplx.html