• apotheotic(she/they)@beehaw.org
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    3 months ago

    “um actually” I guess to properly apply the pythagoras theorem here, you’d need to consider the magnitude of the lengths of each of these vectors in complex space, both of which are 1 (for the magnitude of a complex number you ironically can use pythag, with the real and imaginary coefficients of each complex number.

    So for 1 you get mag(1+0i)=root(1^2 + 0^2) and for i you get mag(0+1i)=root(0^2 + 1^2)

    Then using pythag on the magnitudes, you get hypotenuse = root(1^2 + 1^2) = root 2, as expected

    Shit I meant uhh imaginary number go brr it zero

  • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 months ago

    I like it.

    Read the “1” unit side as “move left 1 unit” and the “i” side as “move up i units”, and the hypotrnuse is the net distance travelled.

    The imaginary line is perpendicular to the real line, so “up i unit” is equivalent to “right 1 unit”. The two movements cancel out giving a net distance of zero.

    • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 days ago

      If so moving down the imaginary line should be equivalent to miving left but then the answer must be 2 units long

      But (-i)² is also -1 and it still results in 0

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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      3 months ago

      Yep. A vertical line segment above A with length 𝑖 is a horizontal line segment to the left that’s 1 unit long. So, the diagram needs a “not to scale” caveat like a map projection, but there’s nothing actually wrong with it, and the triangle’s BC side is 0 units long.