Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 18 5 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Identify with the product of two unit circles and use the unit sphere . The surjective degree-zero sphere-to-torus map isGiven any torus point, choose its two angle representatives with . Then , so completes a preimage on the sphere. Thus the map is surjective. The explicit homotopy , , contracts it to a constant map. By homotopy invariance of mapping degree, , despite surjectivity.