This video gives a brief introduction to Topology. The subject goes back to Euler (as do so many things in modern mathematics) with his discovery of the Euler characteristic of a polyhedron, although arguably Descartes had found something close to this in his analysis of curvature of a polyhedron. We introduce this via rational turn angles, a renormalization of angle where a full turn has the value one (very reasonable, and ought to be used more!!) The topological nature of the Euler characteristic was perhaps first understood by Poincare, and we sketch his argument for its invariance under continuous transformations.
We discuss the sphere, torus, genus g surfaces and the classification of orientable, and non-orientable closed 2 dimensional surfaces, such as the Mobius band (which has a boundary) and the projective plane (which does not). The interest in these objects resulted from Riemann's work on surfaces associated to multi-valued functions in the setting of complex analysis.
Finally we briefly mention the important notion of a simply connected space, and the Poincare conjecture, solved recently, according to current accounts, by G. Perelman.
If you enjoy this subject, you can have a look at my video series Algebraic Topology. This series has now also been continued, so if you go to the Playlist MathHistory, you will find more videos on the History of Mathematics.
Video Content
00:00 Topology
04:43 Euler characteristic of a polyhedron
08:51 A polyhedron homeomorphic to a torus
10:11 H. Poincare (1895)
15:20 Descartes/ letter to Leibniz (1676) studied curvature of polyhedron
16:18 Rational angle version to curvature
23:56 Total curvature equals Euler characteristic
27:28 B.Riemann ( 1826-1866)- Complex functions
38:10 Riemann surfaces
43:30 Classification of 2 dimensional surfaces
44:05 List of all compact orientable surfaces
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Screenshot PDFs for my videos are available at the website http://wildegg.com. These give you a concise overview of the contents of the lectures for various Playlists: great for review, study and summary.
My research papers can be found at my Research Gate page, at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Norman_Wildberger
My blog is at http://njwildberger.com/, where I will discuss lots of foundational issues, along with other things.
Online courses will be developed at openlearning.com. The first one, already underway is Algebraic Calculus One at https://www.openlearning.com/courses/algebraic-calculus-one/ Please join us for an exciting new approach to one of mathematics' most important subjects!
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Here are the Insights into Mathematics Playlists:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL55C7C83781CF4316
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3C58498718451C47
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A714C94D40392AB
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85BhzJ-oWNug1YtUjfWp1qAp
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85Bfc-S4WHvTIM7E-ir3nAOf
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85D94vHAB8joyFTH4dmVJ_Fw
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8403C2F0C89B1333
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85CcGpZpO542YLPeDIf1jqXK
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85Aqe2b4FBWUGJdYROT6-o4e
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85DB7CzoFWvA920NES3g8tJH
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85A-qCypcmZqRvaS1pGXpTua
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85DH__ZzGQWQrVRxlbKh-Nsa
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85CdeBmQZ2QiCEnPQn5KQ6ov
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85AMigTyprOuf__daeklnLse
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85CnIGIWb7tH1F_S2PyOC8rb
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85CN9oJ4gYkuSQQhAtpIucuI
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85DWUiFYYGqJVtfnkUFWkKtP
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6763F57A61FE6FE8
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBF39AFBBC3FB30AF
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85DSrlV6NX8RMBksZhdTHtwW
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85Bmcc9ksBOAKgIZAl0BwPg7
Here are the Wild Egg Maths Playlists (some available only to Members!)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzdiPTrEWyz4rKFN541wFKvKPSg5Ea6XB
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzdiPTrEWyz4VlOppC5CN0D0GjrjvBGKy
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzdiPTrEWyz5VLVr-0LPPgm4T1mtU_DG-
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzdiPTrEWyz6zpIZ4Y_RK9zyJ9OufqNJv
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzdiPTrEWyz7hk_Kzj4zDF_kUXBCtiGn6
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzdiPTrEWyz5j1BJdXBw1MFst_nQAqzZ_
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzdiPTrEWyz5HWgaVkhIwpGVKi6fciRxW