Boundary of a Möbius band winds twice around its core
ID: boundary-of-a-mobius-band-winds-twice-around-its-core
In the quotient space description of the Möbius band, follow once along the rectangle. The seam sends its endpoint to the start of , which must also be traversed before returning to the original point. Under the deformation retraction onto the core circle of a Möbius band, these two stretches each travel once around the same circle. Orienting both circles by increasing longitudinal parameter gives a map of topological degree two. Equivalently, the group homomorphism on fundamental groups induced by inclusion of the boundary sends a chosen generator to twice the core generator, or to in multiplicative notation. Reversing the chosen boundary generator changes the sign, not the fact that it winds twice.
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