Skip to main content

Numbers, and that too IMAGINARY!!

 Hi, I am Emon and yes, I am gonna write something today, after a long period of time, maybe on some imaginary numbers and in turn, complex numbers?

Okay, so let's look back into the history of complex numbers which first evolved mainly in the country of Italy...

Back in the $16$th century, a famous Italian mathematician, Niccolo Fontana Tartaglia posed the following problem in a journal :

Can you find a number $x$ such that $x^3+px=q$, where $p, q$ are given numbers?

In fact, he had a secret formula to this question : $$\boxed{x=\sqrt[3]{\frac{q}{2}+\sqrt{\frac{q^2}{4}+\frac{p^3}{27}}} + \sqrt[3]{\frac{q}{2}-\sqrt{\frac{q^2}{4}+\frac{p^3}{27}}}}$$

Later, Italian Mathematician, Gerolamo Cardano proposed the same problem, with the only modification $p\mapsto -p$ :
Can you find a number $x$ such that $x^3=px+q$, where $p, q$ are given numbers?

He went on to give a second problem by asking :
"Can you divide $10$ into two parts such that their product is $40$?"

The people of those days, having no idea of imaginary numbers whatsoever said, "No, it's not possible!".
But, Cardano said, "Why? Just consider two numbers $5+\sqrt{-15}$ and $5-\sqrt{-15}$."

A few more problems involving the same idea were proposed by some other mathematicians as well. Mathematician Rafael Bombelli, another Italian, proposed a problem: Find $x$ such that $x^3=15x+4$.
Now, everyone, at very first sight answered, "$4!$". Bombelli announced that the answer was correct, but he, at the same time, gave a really intriguing solution, which involved the secret formula of Tartaglia...
Solution of Bombelli. By the secret formula of Tartaglia, we get, $$\begin{aligned} x &=\sqrt[3]{2+\sqrt{-121}}+\sqrt[3]{2-\sqrt{-121}}\\ &= 2+\sqrt{-1}+2-\sqrt{-1}\\ &= 4.\end{aligned}$$
So, basically, the solutions are exactly the same...

Later on, $\sqrt{-1}$ was defined as $i$, and was originally coined by Rene Descartes in the $17$th century and in the future, got wide acceptance from Leonhard Euler in the $18$th century and Augustin-Louis Cauchy and Carl Friedrich Gauss in the $19$th century. The imaginary number was combined with a real number to form the complex number $z=a+ib$, where $a, b\in \mathbb{R}$ and $i=\sqrt{-1}$. Hence, the largest set of numbers $\mathbb{C}$, overtaking the reals $\mathbb R$, came into being and the era of complex numbers started. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Some Wandering Through Orthic Triangles

 Hi, I am Emon and I it's been long since I posted last. Today I will try to give you some ideas on how to work with a special type of triangle, known as " Orthic Triangles ". In this post, I will mainly focus on problem-solving, but still, let me first give you some ideas on what exactly it is and what properties does it have... Definition (Orthic Triangle). Let $ABC$ be a triangle and let $D, E, F$ be the foot of the perpendiculars from $A, B, C$ to $BC, CA$ and $AB$, respectively. Then, $\triangle DEF$ is known as the orthic triangle of $\triangle ABC$. Lemma $1$ (Orthic Triangle). If $\triangle DEF$ is the orthic triangle of $\triangle ABC$ with orthocenter $H$, then the following conditions are satisfied : $(i)$ $AEHF$ is a cyclic quadrilateral with circumdiameter $AH$. $(ii)$ $BCEF$ is a cyclic quadrilateral with circumdiameter $BC$. $(iii)$ $H$ is the incenter of $\triangle DEF$. Lemma $2$. $\angle ABE = \angle ADE$ and $\angle ACF=\angle ADF$. (We can prove this w...

LMAO Revenge

Continuing the tradition of past years, our seniors at the Indian IMO camp(an unofficial one happened this year) once again conducted LMAO, essentially ELMO but Indian. Sadly, only those who were in the unofficial IMOTC conducted by Pranav, Atul, Sunaina, Gunjan and others could participate in that. We all were super excited for the problems but I ended up not really trying the problems because of school things and stuff yet I solved problem 1 or so did I think. Problem 1:  There is a   grid of real numbers. In a move, you can pick any real number  ,  and any row or column and replace every entry   in it with  .  Is it possible to reach any grid from any other by a finite sequence of such moves? It turned out that I fakesolved and oh my god I was so disgusted, no way this proof could be false and then when I was asked Atul, it turns out that even my answer was wrong and he didn't even read the proof, this made me even more angry and guess wha...

Q&A with experts about bashing

Heyy everyone! From the title, you can see that we are going to talk about  BASH.  Yesss, we are going to discuss whether you really need to learn bash or not?  Let me first introduce myself, I am Pranav Choudhary, a 10th grader from Haryana(India). I like to do geo and combo the most :PP. Oki so let's begin! For those of you who don't know what bashing is, lemme give you a brief introduction first. Bashing is basically a technique used to solve Geometry Problems. In general, when you try a geo problem you might think of angles, similarities, and some other techniques (e.g. Inversion, spiral similarity etc). All of which are called synthetic geometry. But sometimes people use various other techniques called "bash" to solve the same problems.  Now there are different kinds of bashing techniques, e.g. - Coordinate bash, Trig Bash, Complex bash, Barycentric Coordinates. Let me give you a brief introduction to each of them.  Coordinate Bash : You set one point as th...