Squares, Quartics, and More!

Math research can certainly be challenging, but when Dr. Hamblen told me that he, Sam, and I would be working with squares, I thought how hard could that be? That answer, very! We have been working away at using squared quaternions (basically one step more complicated than imaginary numbers)  to make any quaternion, in as few steps as possible. As if this wasn’t enough, we are working with a value of i, which when squared is not a square. How can a square not be a square?? Luckily these questions are just as interesting as they are complicated, and this summer should be full of interesting discoveries. We are currently working with i squared is equal to negative two, and will continue to push our brains to think of new creative solutions!