Quaternions and spatial rotation around the "z" axis, then flip it 180 degrees around the "x" axis. Take the other book, flip it 180° around "x" axis first, and 90° clockwise around "z" later. The two books do not end up parallel. This shows that, in general, the composition of two different rotations around two distinct spatial axes will not commute. The vector cross product, used to define the axis–angle representation, does confer an orientation ("handedness") to space: in a three-dimensional vector space, the three vectors in the equation will always form a right-handed set (or a left-handed set, depending on how the cross
Euclidean geometry Pasch in 1882, many improved axiomatic systems for geometry have been proposed, the best known being those of Hilbert, George Birkhoff, and Tarski. Einstein's theory of general relativity shows that the true geometry of spacetime is not Euclidean geometry. For example, if a triangle is constructed out of three rays of light, then in general the interior angles do not add up to 180 degrees due to gravity. A relatively weak gravitational field, such as the Earth's or the sun's, is represented by a metric that is approximately, but not exactly, Euclidean. Until the 20th century, there was no technology