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Questions tagged [general-topology]

Everything involving general topological spaces: generation and description of topologies; open and closed sets, neighborhoods; interior, closure; connectedness; compactness; separation axioms; bases; convergence: sequences, nets and filters; continuous functions; compactifications; function spaces; etc. Please use the more specific tags, (algebraic-topology), (differential-topology), (metric-spaces), (functional-analysis) whenever appropriate.

Everything involving general topological spaces: generation and description of topologies; open and closed sets, neighborhoods; interior, closure; connectedness; compactness; precompactness; separation axioms;countability axioms; bases; convergence: sequences, nets and filters; continuous functions; compactifications; function spaces; proximity; etc. Please use the more specific tags, , , , , whenever appropriate.

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Why can you turn clothing right-side-out?

My nephew was folding laundry, and turning the occasional shirt right-side-out. I showed him a "trick" where I turned it right-side-out by pulling the whole thing through a sleeve instead of the bottom or collar of the shirt. He thought it was…
Chris
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Does there exist a bijection of $\mathbb{R}^n$ with itself such that the forward map is connected but the inverse is not?

Let $(X,\tau), (Y,\sigma)$ be two topological spaces. We say that a map $f: \mathcal{P}(X)\to \mathcal{P}(Y)$ between their power sets is connected if for every $S\subset X$ connected, $f(S)\subset Y$ is connected. Question: Assume…
Willie Wong
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Any open subset of $\Bbb R$ is a countable union of disjoint open intervals

Let $U$ be an open set in $\mathbb R$. Then $U$ is a countable union of disjoint intervals. This question has probably been asked. However, I am not interested in just getting the answer to it. Rather, I am interested in collecting as many…
Orest Xherija
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Your favourite application of the Baire Category Theorem

I think I remember reading somewhere that the Baire Category Theorem is supposedly quite powerful. Whether that is true or not, it's my favourite theorem (so far) and I'd love to see some applications that confirm its neatness and/or power. Here's…
Rudy the Reindeer
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Why is compactness so important?

I've read many times that 'compactness' is such an extremely important and useful concept, though it's still not very apparent why. The only theorems I've seen concerning it are the Heine-Borel theorem, and a proof continuous functions on R from…
FireGarden
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Why can't differentiability be generalized as nicely as continuity?

The question: Can we define differentiable functions between (some class of) sets, "without $\Bbb R$"* so that it Reduces to the traditional definition when desired? Has the same use in at least some of the higher contexts where we would use the…
GPerez
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A Topology such that the continuous functions are exactly the polynomials

I was wondering which fields $K$ can be equipped with a topology such that a function $f:K \to K$ is continuous if and only if it is a polynomial function $f(x)=a_nx^n+\cdots+a_0$. Obviously, the finite fields with the discrete topology have this…
Dominik
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Is there a homology theory that counts connected components of a space?

It is well-known that the generators of the zeroth singular homology group $H_0(X)$ of a space $X$ correspond to the path components of $X$. I have recently learned that for Čech homology the corresponding statement would be that $\check{H}_0(X)$ is…
Dejan Govc
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What functions can be made continuous by "mixing up their domain"?

Definition. A function $f:\Bbb R\to\Bbb R$ will be called potentially continuous if there is a bijection $\phi:\Bbb R\to\Bbb R$ such that $f\circ \phi$ is continuous. So one could say a potentially continuous (p.c.) function is "a continuous…
M. Winter
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Intuition of the meaning of homology groups

I am studying homology groups and I am looking to try and develop, if possible, a little more intuition about what they actually mean. I've only been studying homology for a short while, so if possible I would prefer it if this could be kept…
Spyam
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Best book of topology for beginner?

I am a graduate student of math right now but I was not able to get a topology subject in my undergrad... I just would like to know if you guys know the best one..
gg1
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Elementary proof that $\mathbb{R}^n$ is not homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^m$

It is very elementary to show that $\mathbb{R}$ isn't homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^m$ for $m>1$: subtract a point and use the fact that connectedness is a homeomorphism invariant. Along similar lines, you can show that $\mathbb{R^2}$ isn't…
user7530
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What should be the intuition when working with compactness?

I have a question that may be regarded by many as duplicate since there's a similar one at MathOverflow. The point is that I think I'm not really getting the idea on compactness. I mean, in $\mathbb{R}^n$ the compact sets are those that are closed…
Gold
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Real life applications of Topology

The other day I and my friend were having an argument. He was saying that there is no real life application of Topology at all whatsoever. I want to disprove him, so posting the question here. What are the various real life applications of topology?
Bhargav
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Topology: The Board Game

Edit: I've drawn up some different rules, a map and some cards for playing an actual version of the game. They're available at my personal website with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. This is a math education question that I've been…
Brian Rushton
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