1) I already knew the basic Hamilton bridge-carving story. This is not a surprise; when I was an undergraduate, my senior honors thesis for the math dept. involved quaternions.
2) I switched my major from physics to math just before I would have really started in on quantum-mechanical Hamiltonians, but I heard about them anyway (from my old high-school friend verin_the_brown, who was at the time majoring in physics at the U. of Chicago). Because of (1), I already knew it was the same Hamilton.
3) Despite (1) & (2) above, amnesia_dust, I also at first had a reaction to your initial comment similar to that of jrtom: "Oh, ha ha, I keep my whiskey in Klein bottles, ha ha" except that I assumed that the magazine was the source of the tomfoolery rather than you. Then once I read the article, I thought, "Ohhhh, that's right . . . "
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branchandroot
Re: fascinating, Captain
Date: 19 January 2005 23:38 (UTC)1) I already knew the basic Hamilton bridge-carving story. This is not a surprise; when I was an undergraduate, my senior honors thesis for the math dept. involved quaternions.
2) I switched my major from physics to math just before I would have really started in on quantum-mechanical Hamiltonians, but I heard about them anyway (from my old high-school friend
3) Despite (1) & (2) above,
And, let me just say it again, Mathworld rocks!