[Guardsman]

Hey guys, I want to go to school for engineering, Electrical or Electronics (both, if they have a program like that).

Anyhow, I have a big problem that currently prevents me from finishing even my Associates (Community College of the Air Force).....I can't do text-book algebra.

I can do applied algebra, I've been doing it since I was a kid. But, put a text book in front of me, with x=axb+c2/d, and I might as well be reading Latin.

One test study guide that I looked at had a question asking what the square root of i is. I can't even begin to understand how I get an answer to that. My line of thinking is that an imaginary number doesn't exist, therefore, it can't have a square root. Nothing = nothing.

I worked at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center until recently, and I looked over some of the papers and machine technical stuff, in how the accelerator works, beam physics, etc.

When I look at that kind of stuff, it makes sense to me....I may not know the exact answer, but if I had all of the necessary information, I could figure out the answer.

I also picked up a book, "Engineering Formulas", by two German guys, and looking through there, the formulas make sense to me.

Has anybody had this kind of problem before, or know somebody that did, or just have any suggestions that might help me out?

I love doing math, but it frustrates the crap out of me that I can't get past this. I tried taking algebra twice in high school, flunked both times, tried it again in 1998, and got a D on that.

I don't want to just pass the classes, I actually want to learn the stuff. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

John

[Guardsman]

Phil, that still makes absolutely no sense to me..... (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/banghead.gif)

"a and bi are just the real and imaginary parts of some number whose sqaure is i"

If I can visualize things (6 stones, 5 amps, etc.), I can figure them out......how can I calculate something that is imaginary (see where I'm going here?).

Maybe I'm missing something else that would make sense to me......how can an imaginary number affect a real number? If it's imaginary, it doesn't exist, and something that doesn't exist can't influence something that does exist.

In the same sense, when I'm trying to do any regular algebra problem, as they show up in a text book, the values could be anything......so my answer could be anything.....and I would believe that I'm trying to find a specific answer.....or is that where I'm going wrong?

Sean, I see what you're saying, but when I'm dealing with circuits, I can visualize what I'm working with. Even if the circuit is in a different configuration, I can eventually identify the components of it by going through what the circuit is supposed to be doing, and figure it out from there.

The problem with the book algebra, is that I'm not even dealing with a circuit that I can eventually recognize. I simply have a bunch of "anythings" that I'm supposed to do something with. But I can't do anything with them until I can assign some type of value to them.

Then, it goes on to, I can assign a value to one, but then, how do I know that the value that I assign to the others are going to be the prpoer values to complete the equation?

I gotta run right now, but this is how I'm stuck, if it makes any sense to you guys.....Thanks again. John