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15 votes
1 answer
721 views

Teaching cohomology via everyday examples

This question is a "sequel" to my similar questions about the fundamental group and homology. All of these questions were inspired by seeing a talk, by Tadashi Tokieda, about the interesting physics ...
16 votes
2 answers
1k views

Teaching Steenrod Operations

I am teaching a class on topology and want to introduce Steenrod Operations. I have talked about simplicial sets and classifying spaces of groups but have not talked about Eilenberg–MacLane spaces. ...
rrrrrrr's user avatar
  • 161
26 votes
2 answers
3k views

Teaching the fundamental group via everyday examples

This question is a "prequel" to a similar question about homology. Both questions were inspired by seeing a talk, by Tadashi Tokieda, about the interesting physics that appears in toys. What ...
86 votes
16 answers
9k views

Teaching homology via everyday examples

What stories, puzzles, games, paradoxes, toys, etc from everyday life are better understood after learning homology theory? To be more precise, I am teaching a short course on homology, from ...
4 votes
2 answers
857 views

Terminology question on covering spaces

I'm teaching an elementary class about fundamental groups and covering spaces. It was very useful to use "fool's covering spaces" of a space $X$, defined as functors $\Pi_1(X)\to Sets$, where $\Pi_1(X)...
Pavol S.'s user avatar
  • 407
13 votes
1 answer
3k views

An elementary proof that the degree of a map of spheres determines its homotopy type

I'm helping to teach an undergraduate algebraic geometry course (out of Hatcher's textbook). We have recently defined the degree of a map of spheres using homology, and the professor and I thought it ...
Charles Staats's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
2k views

The etale fundamental group of a field

Background and motivation: I am teaching the "covering space" section in an introductory algebraic topology course. I thought that, in the last five minutes of my last lecture, I might briefly sketch ...
Charles Staats's user avatar
40 votes
16 answers
11k views

"Homotopy-first" courses in algebraic topology

A first course in algebraic topology, at least the ones I'm familiar with, generally gets students to a point where they can calculate homology right away. Building the theory behind it is generally ...