Only a true nerd...

[Bill Baxter]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 6:28 AM, Knud Soerensen
<4tuu4k002 at sneakemail.com> wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> ... would dare to wear a Maxwell's Equations t-shirt.
>>
>> http://www.cafepress.com/digitalmars
>
> I actually had a t-shirt which said
>
> God said:
> <insert Maxwell's equation>
> and there was light
>
> But I would not were it today

I was thinking the same thing.  Maybe it's something that seems more
appealing to a college student just learning that stuff, but to me it
seems like a fairly boring old set of differential equations now.

> when I know that Maxwell's equations don't
> describe all electromagnetic experiments.

Well, that wasn't quite my reason.

> See http://www.scribd.com/doc/4445/quaternionic-electrodynamics

Interesting.  The other interesting developement these days seems to
be describing things using the math of differential forms and/or
geometric algebra.  Instead of div grad curl, and all that.    Hmm the
biquaternions in your reference seem to be related to this...  I see
both "geometry algebra" and "biquaternions" associated with "Clifford
algebra" in google searches.   Don't really understand all that stuff
myself, but I'm interested in learning more.    The SIGGRAPH course
notes for the Discrete Differential Geometry course have a paper by
Desbrun on differential forms that I was reading through the other
day.
http://www.geometry.caltech.edu/pubs/GSD06.pdf

Here's a quote I just found:
"""
The elegance of geometric algebra is clearly evident in that fact that
Maxwell's equations become a single equation in this algebra.
"""
http://jtauber.com/blog/2004/03/27/geometric_algebra/

And here's that equation, apparently:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/2/a/8/2a875588f083c9242880671dc49ed8d0.png

Maybe it doesn't make for quite as interesting a T-shirt though...
but still it puts you one-up over those guys wearing Maxwell's
equations written in component form.  That's sooo passe.  And any
run-of-the-mill nerd recognizes the component form.  To be a true
uber-elite nerd you need to wear the geometric algebra Maxwell's
equation.

Heh.  You make that shirt, and I just might buy it.  :-)

--bb