> Like Quaternions, which add another dimension to our 3 to help solve ambiguities with Euler angles and gimbal lock. Going another dimension up makes the solut

> Like Quaternions, which add another dimension to our 3 to help solve ambiguities with Euler angles and gimbal lock. Going another dimension up makes the solutions much more elegant. I always liked that one. Gimbal lock comes in because to be of any practical use you gotta have a reference axis from which you start to rotate, which necessarily creates poles with a singularity. Since you gotta have the axis there's no way around it. So, how to solve that? Easy: stuff the axis outside of 3d space. It doesn't even matter what the axis is, it's just there to stash the singularity away and you can rotate every which way continuously.