Wednesday, 11 May 2011

Quaternions and Quilts

As I write this my beautiful Jeannie is in Paducah working on our retirement home.  I mention this because Paducah happens to be the home of the National Quilt Museum (which just managed to stay above water level in recent weeks).  And I mention that  because a tweet from @MathBits just came across my desk with the image below.
Now if that looks like just any old pretty quilt, look again.  The quilt is designed to represent the Quaternions (sometimes called the H group, and sometimes Q8) multiplication table ... In case you've forgotten (shame) the multiplication rules for Quaternions here they are :
Group equations

As best I can tell, the quilt is the handy work of Professor Gwen L. Fisher of the Department of Mathematics at California State Polytechnic Univ., San Louis Obispo.
And if you need to see the whole multiplication relation explained, see the page here, with that and much more about Quaternions and quilts. 
at

2 comments:

  1. Steven Colyer11 May 2011 at 20:23

    Coming back to the States, are you laddie? Don't expect the same country you left, believe that. But yah, Western Kentuck is as fine a place as anyone can find, good people, and that's the most important thing, yes?

    Quaternions. Very important. Have you been to the bridge in Ireland that Hamilton first inscribed them? Octonions too. John Baez thinks highly of both, see his weblog Azimuth for more. Much work to be done. Who knows what the morrow shall bring? :)

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  2. I, Robot22 May 2011 at 17:39

    s/Quaterninon/Quaternion/ in the title.

    Other than that, I enjoyed the post, as my wife is quilter.

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