You can owe someone five rocks (or dollars, to make it only slightly less abstract.)
You can go five miles east instead of west (more of a vector, but still makes sense if your movements are limited to a number line instead of a number plane).
Imaginary numbers are more of the same with a twist. i is just a π/2 rotation on a plane instead of a negative number, which can be thought of as rotation by π on a line.
The big mistake with imaginary numbers is calling them imaginary. There's nothing imaginary about them. They're a very specific kind of operation which can be expanded with very little thought or effort to complex numbers, which have incredibly useful properties in engineering.
Calling them "imaginary" is cripplingly confusing for almost everyone, and many never get over it.
You can go five miles east instead of west (more of a vector, but still makes sense if your movements are limited to a number line instead of a number plane).
Imaginary numbers are more of the same with a twist. i is just a π/2 rotation on a plane instead of a negative number, which can be thought of as rotation by π on a line.
The big mistake with imaginary numbers is calling them imaginary. There's nothing imaginary about them. They're a very specific kind of operation which can be expanded with very little thought or effort to complex numbers, which have incredibly useful properties in engineering.
Calling them "imaginary" is cripplingly confusing for almost everyone, and many never get over it.