Re: Physics

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Mddeming@xxxxxxx 

In a message dated 5/22/05 3:11:02 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
tesla@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
  This is a subject which has been around for well over 100 years and is
thoroughly covered in a biography of Oliver Heaviside which I'll look at
again.  For some reason quaternions have been ascribed almost mythical
powers, but I think that's all phony baloney and that the present form
of "Maxwell's equations" are every bit as accurate as Maxwell's original
form, which is very very awkward.  The business of scalar potentials and
scalar waves has become of great interest to the free energy cult and
hence is thoroughly mixed up with Tesla and Tesla lore.

Ed


Hi Ed,
I would concur. There is a big difference in "different notation" and 
"different nature".
"The McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Science and Technology  5th ed.", 
lists quaternions as "An associative, noncommutative algebra based on four 
linearly independent units or basal elements." The CRC Concise Encyclopedia 
of Mathematics" gives a more expanded definition and shows basic operations 
of this division algebra.
While it does provide a more compact notation for some types of 
mathematical manipulations, it does not seem to provide any more insight 
into the nature of what is being described.

Matt D.