§RU.1 IN MY PRIMER ON THE SOLUTION of the general cubic, I mentioned the cube roots of 1 (§CQ.4). There are three of these little devils. Obviously 1 itself is a cube root of 1, since 1×1×1 = 1. The ...

For almost a century, physicists have been intrigued by the fundamental question: why are complex numbers so important in quantum mechanics, that is, numbers containing a component with the imaginary ...

A century ago, the strange behavior of atoms and elementary particles led physicists to formulate a new theory of nature. That theory, quantum mechanics, found immediate success, proving its worth ...