Visualizing Quaternions

Andrew J. Hanson Ph.D. is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at Indiana University. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard University in 1966 and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from MIT under Kerson Huang in 1971. His interests range from general relativity to computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and bioinformatics; he is particularly concerned with applications of quaternions and with exploitation of higher-dimensional graphics for the visualization of complex scientific contexts such as Calabi-Yau spaces. He is the co-discoverer of the Eguchi-Hanson “gravitational instanton” Einstein metric (1978), author of Visualizing Quaternions (Elsevier, 2006), and designer of the iPhone Apps “4Dice” and “4DRoom” (2012) for interacting with four-dimensional virtual reality.

About the Author; Preface; I Elements of Quaternions; 1 The Discovery of Quaternions; 2 Rotations Take the Stage; 3 Basic Notation; 4 What Are Quaternions?; 5 Roadmap to Quaternion Visualization; 6 Basic Rotations; 7 Visualizing Algebraic Structure; 8 Visualizing Quaternion Spheres; 9 Visualizing Logarithms and Exponentials; 10 Basic Interpolation Methods; 11 Logarithms and Exponentials for Rotations; 12 Seeing Elementary Quaternion Frames; 13 Quaternions and the Belt Trick; 14 More about the Rolling Ball: Order-Dependence is Good; 15 More About Gimbal Lock; II Advanced Quaternion Applications and Topics; 16 Alternative Ways to Write Down Quaternions; 17 Efficiency and Complexity Issues; 18 Advanced Sphere Visualization; 19 Orientation Frames and Rotations; 20 Quaternion Frame Methods; 21 Quaternion Curves and Surfaces; 22 Quaternion Curves; 23 Quaternion Surfaces; 24 Quaternion Volumes; 25 Quaternion Maps of Streamlines and Flow Fields; 26 Quaternion Interpolation; 27 Controlling Quaternion Animation; 28 Global Minimization: Advanced Interpolation; 29 Quaternion Rotator Dynamics; 30 Spherical Riemann Geometry; 31 Quaternion Barycentric Coordinates; 32 Quaternions and Representations of the Rotation Group; 33 Quaternions and the Four Division Algebras; 34 Clifford Algebras; 35 Conclusion; A Notation; B 2D Complex Frames; C 3D Quaternion Frames; D Frame and Surface Evolution; E Quaternion Survival Kit; F Quaternion Methods; G Quaternion Path Optimization Using Evolver; H The Relationship of 4D Rotations to Quaternions; I Quaternion Frame Integration; J Hyperspherical Geometry; References; Index