knot theory
Sign in to savestudy of mathematical knots
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Examples of different knots including the unknot (top left) and the trefoil knot (below it) A knot diagram of the trefoil knot, the simplest non-trivial knot
In topology, knot theory is the study of mathematical knots. While inspired by knots which appear in daily life, such as those in shoelaces and rope, a mathematical knot differs in that the ends are joined so it cannot be undone, the simplest knot being a ring (or "unknot"). In mathematical language, a knot is an embedding of a circle in 3-dimensional Euclidean space,
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “knot theory” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.