🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr9.174048.11924@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> berrier@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov (K. Berrier 283-4125) writes:
>A quaternion is a transformation matrix consisting of a scalar 
>and a vector.  The scalar is the angle of rotation about the 
>axis represented by the vector.
>
>They are often used to represent the relationship between two 
>coordinate systems since there are only four elements instead 
>of the usual nine. (Decreasing the number of calculations 
>required and increasing speed of computation.)

I believe quaternions are rational extensions into threespace of
imaginary numbers, you get from "x + iy" to "x + iy + jz" (or I guess
for EE's, it would be "x + jy" and "x + jy + kz") where i,j have
traditional square-root-of-negative-one meanings. I can't remember
exactly, it was only interesting to me for playing with 3d extensions
of the ordinary Mandelbrot set graphics generator functions.
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