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MAT 539
Algebraic Topology

This is a snapshot of a figure eight knot. Click here to view a VRML 1.0 version of the knot. Use the mouse to navigate around, turn on/off the light sources, and so on...
Here is another (real) picture of the figure eight knot borrowed from Tony Phillips' web page on "Knots and their polynomials".

To view the above VRML file you will need to download first a VRML plug-in for your browser. Here are several choices:
  1. You may try the older and unsupported Cosmo player, which works reasonably well with Internet Explorer and Netscape on older windows platforms, or
  2. The newer WorldView, or
  3. Better, you may install the Cortona plug-in.
All these plug-ins are freely available, but the last plug-in provides better graphics support on Windows XP/2000, or Mac OSX platforms.

Finally if on a Linux/Unix platform, download either vrmlview or the Java based browser vrwave. Alternatively here is a list of VRML viewers available for Linux platforms.