Why?

[GAHD]

yes it can, but again, you can't have a negative number of rocks, negative numbers are technically imaginary. Shure math works out that negatives cancel out to a positive upon multiplication, but I'd challenge you to put any negative number of rocks in a box, thus negative numbers are imaginary.

Are you quite sure of all this?

 

It might be difficult, but it depends on your definition of 'rock'. If you are speaking in element terms, then helium isotopes (and a few other elements) could be considered the 'square root' of different 'rock' elements (think atomic weight). This assumes you can have a 'rock' consisting of a single atom.

 

Here's one for you; what's the square root of -25?

5 i

Can you have 5 i rocks?

[Qfwfq]

You can't have 5 i rocks and neither can you have root 3 of them. The numbers for counting objects, when you consider each object as a unit equal to others, are the so-called natural numbers as defined by Peano's axioms.

 

You can't have -5 rocks but you can have more or less of them and you might owe another caveman 5 rocks.

 

You can't have root 3 rocks but you can have root three metres, you can have pi metres or e metres.

 

None of these numbers are called imaginary numbers in mathematical convention, only those given by i times some real number. These are useful too.