25 Apr
2003
25 Apr
'03
8:04 p.m.
The surface of a donut is a torus embedded in 3-space, but chances are no one thinks of the playing field of the videogame 'Asteroids' as being embedded in 3-space even though it behaves identically--it's just a 2D space where objects that go off one side show up on the other. Manifolds are like 'Asteroids'--they don't need embedding in anything else to have properties different from Euclidean space. Rich wrote: Anyone care to tackle Dan's comment
(such as assuming that n-manifolds are subsets of n+1 space)
and come up with an accurate explanation of manifold, understandable at the level of a college graduate who majored in, say, chemistry? -- Mike Stay staym@clear.net.nz http://www.xaim.com/staym