Map Coloring; Martin Gardner's Projective Plane & variations

We will explore two topics in Stephen Barr's book "Experiments in Topology": 1) Map coloring (Chapter 7), and 2) Martin Gardner's projective plane and some variations on it (pages 82-91 of Chapter 6). Most of our time will be spent exploring the Chapter 6 material on the projective plane.

The introductory section of Chapter 1 on pages 1-9 (especially the account on homeomorphism) and Chapter 2 on pages 20-39 provide important background information for the Chapter 6 material.

To guide your exploration of the text and to guide our exploration during the meetup, I have organized this list of 11 questions: http://www.cjfearnley.com/MathCounts/TopologicalSurfaces.07.pdf

Three of the questions are on map coloring. The rest of the questions (8) explore detailed experiments about the Gardner model of the projective plane and some variants. The aim of the models is to provide some insights into the symmetry of the projective plane. You will need the questions and the book in order to look review them before the meetup. Building the models is recommended as it will allow us to explore the subject in much more depth and breadth.

This meetup is part of a series exploring the content of Stephen Barr's fun book "Experiments in Topology".

"Experiments in Topology" is available from Dover (http://store.doverpublications.com/0486259331.html)

"Experiments in Topology" at Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=9TMx6ABV-98C)

Each event will be made as accessible to newcomers as possible. Key concepts will be reviewed and any technical terms will be explained. If anything is unfamiliar to you, please ask and we will try to clarify.