The displayed subspace of the Euclidean plane is path-connected: each vertical rational tooth joins the horizontal line at height one. Delete for rational . The residual tooth cannot be joined by a path to the top line. Before a path first reaches height one, its first coordinate is a continuous rational-valued function on an interval and must therefore be constant; it would reach the deleted point.
The punctured space remains connected. Its portions on either side of are path-connected, and by the density of the rational numbers. Adjoining limit points to a connected set preserves connectedness: a separation would place the connected subset on one side and prevent the other side from containing its limit points. Hence and are connected and intersect in . Their union is connected. This example distinguishes connectedness from path-connected using the loss of a single attachment point.

Articles by others on the same topic (0)

There are currently no matching articles.