Abstract Some of the confusions concerning quaternions as they are employed in spacecraft attitude work are discussed. The order of quaternion multiplication is discussed in terms of its historical development and its consequences for the quaternion imaginaries. The different formulations for the quaternions are also contrasted. It is shown that the three Hamilton imaginaries cannot be interpreted as the basis of the vector space of physical vectors but only as constant numerical column vectors, the autorepresentation of a physical basis.


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    Title :

    The nature of the quaternion


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2008-09-01


    Size :

    15 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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