Abstract
Having covered complex numbers, vectors and matrices, the reader is ready to discover the algebra of quaternions, which integrates all three topics. After a brief historical review of Hamilton’s invention, this chapter provides a rapid overview of quaternion algebra starting with a definition and the notation used in this book. The chapter covers quaternion addition, subtraction, and multiplication, pure quaternions, magnitude, unit, conjugate, and inverse. All of these concepts are required to perform rotations about an arbitrary axis. The chapter concludes with a summary and a list of the quaternion operations covered.
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© 2011 Springer-Verlag London Limited
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Vince, J. (2011). Quaternions. In: Rotation Transforms for Computer Graphics. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-154-7_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-154-7_5
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-85729-153-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-85729-154-7
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