ATDTDA: 542 the "W" term

[Ray Easton]

On Tuesday, Apr 3, 2007, at 02:35 US/Central, 
robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

> So will someone please tell me what the "W" term is?
>

The so-called "scalar term" in a quaternion.  Every quaternion can be 
written uniquely in the form w + x*i + y*j +z*k, where w, x, y, and z 
are real numbers.

So far as I can tell, in some quack science accounts of 
Electro-magnetism, the vector analysis formulation of this theory is 
held to be deficient  because there are features that can only be 
properly accounted for by the use of quaternions with their w-term.

Ray