Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 26 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For a continuous map , use the classes from part (a). Since , there is an integer with . Naturality of the cup product and yieldWith the product orientation on the source and the complex orientation on the target, the mapping degree is defined by . Evaluation on the fundamental class givesThus the induced group homomorphism on is zero. This is a cup-power obstruction to nonzero degree, rather than a consequence of the additive homology groups alone.