Thursday, February 11, 2016 - 14:00 to 14:50
Thackeray 427
Abstract or Additional Information
In this talk we will rip the usual notion of distace off the plane, and we will play with paths so that they have lengths that we want them to have. You will see that in order to do this one does not really have to specify the length of every possible curve. It is much simpler, and we will explicitly do two examples.
Come and follow the hands-on calculations with me to see how such tamperings with "the metric" give rise to an "intrinsic" definiton of curvature.
Ex1: I'll equip the plane with a new way of measuring distances, so that it will in effect become the sphere!
Ex2: Poincare Half-Plane
No background above Calculus 2 is assumed.