Pure and unit quaternions

From Robotics
Revision as of 15:28, 23 June 2015 by Nickchen (talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search
← Back: Basic properties of quaternions Overview: Quaternions Next: Addition of quaternions

Pure quaternion

A quaternion whose vector part is zero equals a real number corresponding to the scalar part.

A quaternion whose scalar part is zero, is called a pure quaternion. The square of pure quaternions is always real and not positive.

Multiplication of pure quaternions leads to

Failed to parse (unknown function "\cross"): (0,\vec{x})(0,\vec{y})=(-\vec{x}\cdot\vec{y},\vec{x}\cross\vec{y})

Unlike the multiplication of real or complex numbers, the multiplication is not commutative:


\begin{align}
ij &= -ji = k \\
jk &= -kj = i \\
ki &= -ik = j
\end{align}