Rotations, Quaternions, and Double Groups | 
 enlarge | Author: Simon L. Altmann
Publisher: Dover Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 253611
Media: Paperback
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0486445186
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.12
EAN: 9780486445182
Publication Date: November 3, 2005
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Product Description
This text presents a consistent description of the geometric and quaternionic treatment of rotation operators. Covers the fundamentals of symmetries, matrices, and groups and presents a primer on rotations and rotation matrices. Also explores rotations and angular momentum, tensor bases, the bilinear transformation, projective representations, more. Includes problems with solutions.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Can there be a rave review of a group theory book? May 15, 2006
R. Bagula (Lakeside, Ca United States)
43 out of 47 found this review helpful
This book has the best explanation of Clifford algebra
that I've ever seen.
The coverage of dihedral, space groups, quaternions and even projective
diagrams is just very ,very good.
He introduces "The Rodrigues programme" which is
a very good angular approach to quaternions
that actually predates Hamilton's quaternions
but has been overlooked.
He doesn't spare on word definitions and explanations.
The index is fully operational
and definitions are for the most part complete and understandable.
In other words he actually doesn't just pretend to teach
group theory, he actually does!
If you have always wondered about SU(2) and quaternions, this is the book
that you "need" to read.
Roger L. Bagula
Great book on a visual subject October 26, 2007
Kenneth A. Lloyd Jr.
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book will be difficult for "paper mathematicians" because it describes concepts of orientations in multidimensional configuration space that requires visual / spatial ability. It does so with with a depth and granularity that can be appreciated by those who work with these "tools". This small book is not a quick read, nor a general overview. It takes time to ruminate on these words to gain understanding of increasingly important behaviors in classical and quantum physics, as well as modeling the complexity in systems. But, these rewards require an investment of time and thought.
 Exceedingly scholarly; hard to digest June 30, 2007
Mr. Hedgie (Greenwich, CT, USA)
8 out of 15 found this review helpful
This book displays great erudition. The reference section lists 140 books or articles about quaternions and rotations, going back to the 19th and even 18th centuries. The author shows off his command of this literature, taking a very thorough approach, bringing up subtle points that experts on the subject might not have fully grasped. Unfortunately, for a non-expert like me, the result is often bafflement.
Some passages just seem obscure, for example on p 28 "rotations are an accident of three dimensional space. In spaces of any other dimensions the fundamental operations are reflections". There is no further discussion of this point, which is far from obvious to me.
My background is in computing. I was looking for a general introduction to quaternions and their applications. This book did not meet my objectives. It is inexpensive and well produced but the contents too inaccessible.
 A big disappointment May 8, 2007
Timothy Robinson
11 out of 18 found this review helpful
I came to this book with a good understanding of matrices, tensors, complex numbers, quaternions and some quantum mechanics. But I was unsure about spinors, and I hoped this book would help. It didn't.
Much time is wasted is confusing and unnecessary quibbles. Each rotation can be represented by either of two quaternions. But which one? Far too much is made of this dilemma. Each rotation has two poles. Far too much is made of this too.
The author's plan seems to be to create as much confusion as possible, and then show how quaternions can clean it all up, like a superhero at the end of a movie. Much better to *start* with quaternions and never let the confusion arise in the first place.
Dismal.
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