MaPSS: Maths Postgraduate Seminar Series: Joel Gibson -- Quaternions, rotations, and Spin groups

Hello all, 

The next MaPSS talk of this semester will be at 17:00 on Mon 4th Nov in Carslaw 535.
It’s a great opportunity to meet fellow postgrads, listen to an interesting talk, and of
course get some free pizza! 

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Speaker: Joel Gibson 

Title: Quaternions, rotations, and Spin groups 

Abstract: The quaternions are a four-dimensional number system, famously discovered by
William Hamilton in 1843 whilst vandalising a bridge in Dublin.  Despite their dubious
origins, they have become ubiquitous in computer graphics because of their close
relationship to 3D rotations.  In this talk I will cover different ways to encode 3D
rotations, including unit quaternions and their higher-dimensional analogues built from
Clifford algebras (the Spin groups), and conclude by comparing the underlying geometry
of all of these parameter spaces.  

The talk will include lots of pictures, discussion of vague questions like "what is an
11-dimensional rotation, really?", and most probably a mislabelled angle in a planar
geometry proof.  

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See you there! 

Details can also be found on the school’s Postgraduate Society website:
http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/MaPS/mapss.2019.html 

Cheers, Eric