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Imaginary Numbers

By Liz Bulkley on Monday, January 29, 2007.

Magicians and mathematicians have pondered the impossibility and mystery of the square root of minus one for centuries. Tonight on the Front Porch we're going to let our minds run free while we explore the importance of imaginary numbers. We'll find out why electricity as we know it wouldn't exist without an understanding of the unreal numbers, and find out about the earliest searches for the square root for minus one. Our guest is Paul Nahin, author of An Imaginary Tale: The Story of the Square Root of Minus One.

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