Visualizing Complex Numbers
Highlights of the activity
- This kinesthetic activity is designed to help upper-division physics students visualize complex numbers given in various forms.
- Students create an Argand diagram with their left arm to represent complex numbers.
- The whole class wrap-up discussion emphasizes how forms of complex numbers can be represented and how they are related to each other.
Reasons to spend class time on the activity
Students often have little experience recognizing and manipulating different forms of complex numbers at this stage of their career. Given the repeated use of complex numbers in the upper division curriculum, students benefit from an introduction or review which emphasizes the geometric representations of complex numbers in various forms. This activity provides an engaging way to visualize complex numbers.