Find the number of values of that satisfy the equation .
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Let z = x + i y with x , y ∈ R , then
( x + i y ) 2 + x 2 + y 2 = 0
x 2 − y 2 + 2 x y i = − x 2 + y 2
Comparing imaginary and real parts, we find that x = y = 0 is a solution or that either x = 0 or y = 0. The case in which y = 0 gets excluded, because the left hand side would be strictly positive ( x 2 ) , while the right hand side ( − x 2 ) would be strictly negative. (Note that the only solution ( x = y = 0 ) is already found by other reasoning, math is extremely beautiful :-)).
We thus continue with x = 0 and get:
− y 2 = − y 2
y 4 = y 2
y 2 = 1
y = 1 ∨ − 1 .
Hence we get three solutions ( 0 , i , − i ) .