Why do Electrical Engineers use imaginary numbers in circuit analysis?

Comments · 699

• N1

  @n11ck · 11 months ago

  Mathematicians: Immaginary numbers<br>Engineers: Jmmaginary numbers

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• MY

  @myggmastaren3365 · 3 years ago

  short answer: because by using imaginary numbers we don&apos;t have to solve horrifying differential equations for every single circuit

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• MA

  @MarcoMa210 · 1 year ago

  always cool to see jmaginary numbers appearing in real life

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• AM

  @AmyMcGuire-i6m · 2 months ago

  each time i watch this i get closer to understanding half of what he says

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• NE

  @nestorv7627 · 3 years ago

  I&apos;m a mathematician/physicist doing a career switch over to electrical engineering, and this has been the clearest introduction to Impedance I&apos;ve seen. Thanks a lot

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• FU

  @fuzzy-pillar · 3 years ago (edited)

  The two types of math video:<br>&quot;Today we&apos;re going to use trig to discover some really useful law of nature and gain a deeper insight into the world&quot;<br>and<br>&quot;Today we&apos;re going to prove that I don&apos;t understand math but I think this result is profound because I use calculus&quot;

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• CH

  @CharlesDailey-s6h · 3 years ago

  Me a Junior year Electrical engineer: Hmmm yes, finally a video I can send to my friends who have no idea what I&apos;m talking about at 3am.

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• IB

  @iboyyobi1543 · 3 years ago

  This was mind blowing, this puts to rest my age old quest on how Laplace&apos;s transform converts differential into algebraic equations and the inverse Laplace does the opposite. Also had a smile on my face when I saw how Vc in an RC circuit literally maps to the total impedance of the circuit, just as in two resistors. I learned all of these 2 decades ago and it all came back to me. You don&apos;t need to do rote learning if you understand it deep at this level. A million thanks for all your efforts. Don&apos;t underestimate the value of your work, it brings a lot of smiles to a lot of people.

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• MO

  @MosesMatsepane · 3 years ago

  Electrical Engineers watching in horror because you used i for imaginary numbers instead of j. 😅😅

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• RJ

  @rjScubaSki · 3 years ago

  I remember having a 15 minute “discussion” with my professor in my EE lesson at uni (consistently in the top 5 in the world!) where he literally claimed there were an imaginary number of electrons moving around in the circuit. After a while people really can lose sight of their abstractions.

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• GR

  @Green_Axolotl · 2 years ago

  I Watched this not expecting this to be by the same guy who makes leprechauns put pots of gold in a country I can&apos;t remember the name of.

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• MO

  @mostinho7 · 2 years ago

  Right off the bat this video clarified what “phase” meant at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCNHN7B9iDM&amp;t=40">0:40</a>. I knew it was related to the phase of the signal (how much it’s shifted back or forth) but I didn’t realize that it was the phase of the current in relation to the voltage, and that the derivative in the capacitor equation is what introduces it into the circuit. I graduated from ece 5 years ago, learned AC circuit analysis 8 years ago. We just learned to calculate things, not get an intuition for why things work. This video is delightful for someone who spent time calculating and wants to get some insight into how things work.

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