Imaginary Euler

rwk
January 2018

1 Explanation
The initial formula is called Euler’s Formula.

eix = cos x + i sin x

A special case of it, whenever cos x is zero, you might have seen:

eiπ + 1 = 0
But we’ll just use the full formula.
We just substitute in x = π2 :
π π π
ei 2 = cos + i sin
2 2
Since:
π
sin =1
2
and
π
cos =0
2
We have:
π
ei 2 = i
Raising both sides to i:
π
i
ei 2 = ii
Using:
b
(xa )) = xab
and

ii = −1

1
 We get
π
e− 2 = ii
The left hand side is a real number, approximately 0.20787957635, so ii is a
real number.