Having Fun with Complex Numbers: a Real-Life Journey for Upper Elementary Studen

https://www.eoas.ubc.ca/courses/atsc113/snow/met_concepts/07...

His other research

had involved discovering the mechanism of ICE CRYSTAL GROWTH HABIT CHANGE, an outstanding problem for more than 50 years in cloud physics that is closely related to the “thousands’ variations” in snowflakes.

As far as I understand, he essentially defines $i$ through a π/2 rotation. But this is exactly what $i^2=-1$ is. So in a sense, I do not think it is quack, but overblown in terms of novelty. Personally, I always liked such kinds of geometric approach to complex numbers, because it makes a lot of stuff more intuitive, even just for reals (eg you can see multiplication by -1 as rotation by π). If he makes a good dissemination of the complex numbers to kids, it could be worth it, but no idea without any sample from the book.

Is wrong

But an easy way to define the complex plane is to postulate you want multiplication of vectors in polar form to multiply distance to origin and add angles. No mystery number squares going negative here, just simple and useful geometry !

There’s a whole book about it, Visual Complex Numbers by Tristan Needham. This author is the real boss of the game