Math 205C Homework 4

Edward Burkard

April 28, 2010

Exercise 1. Compute the fundamental group of the space formed by identifying the north and south poles of S 2 .
Solution. Let n denote the north pole of S 2 and s the south pole. Let P = S 2 /(n ∼ s), the pinched sphere. As is
apparent in the picture at the end of the homework (where d.r. stands for deformation retract) since P and S 2 ∧ S 1
are both deformation retracts of the space R3 \ S 1 :
π1 (P ) ∼
= π1 (R3 \ S 1 ) ∼
= π1 (S 2 ∨ S 1 ) ∼
= π1 (S 2 ) ∗ π1 (S 1 ) ∼
= {e} ∗ Z ∼
= Z.

Exercise 2. Find another cell decomposition for S 2 . Verify that it satisfies Euler’s formula.
Solution. We will construct this with one 0-cell, one 1-cell, and two 2-cells in the following way:

Start with one 0-cell:

•
Attach one 1-cell:

And attach two 2-cells:

where ϕ, ψ : ∂D2 → S 1 are the attaching maps.

This still satisfies Euler’s formula since:
χ = (# of 2-cells) − (# of 1-cells) + (# of 0-cells) = 2 − 1 + 1 = 2
which we know to be the Euler characteristic of S 2 .

Exercise 3. Compute π1 (K2 ) using a cell decomposition.

Solution. Keeping the identification of the square to get the Klein bottle in mind:

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we construct the Klein bottle as follows:

Start with one 0-cell:

•
Attach two 1-cells to create two loops, call them α and β:

Attach one 2-cell according to the relation αβαβ −1 = e as apparent from the identification of the square:

Borrowed from <http://www.math.brown.edu/∼banchoff/art/PAC-9603/tour/klein/klein.html>

I figured I would just include the picture here since this step would be hard to draw! :-)

Thus the fundamental group of K2 is:

π1 (K2 ) = α, β | αβαβ −1 = e



Exercise 4. Show that the cell structure in T2 is the product cell structure for some cell structure on S 1 .

Proof. Consider the cell structure on S 1 given by e1 attached to e0 with attaching map the constant map:

Taking the product of this cell structure with itself we get the cell structure consisting of one 0-cell: e0 × e0 ; two
1-cells: e0 × e1 and e1 × e0 ; and one 2-cell: e1 × e1 . We can see that this gives the cell structure of the torus (which
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is given by one 0-cell, two 1-cells, and one 2 cell) below:


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