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Monday, August 18, 2014

3-4-5 complex number has Infinite order

This is a good exercise/challenge with complex numbers.

Consider the complex number  Z = \large \frac35 + \frac45 i. (Where \large i = \sqrt{-1}.)

Prove that Z^n is never equal to 1 for any positive whole number n = 1, 2, 3, 4, \dots .

This complex number Z comes from the familiar 3-4-5 right triangle that you all know: 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2.

In math we sometimes say that an object X has "infinite order" when no positive power of it can be the identity (1, in this multiplicative case). For example, i itself has finite order 4 since i^4 = 1, while 2 has infinite order since no positive power of 2 can be equal to 1. The distinct feature of Z above is that it has modulus 1, so is on the unit circle \mathbb T in the complex plane.

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