Math 136 final project

What follows are the rules for the final writing project.

THE RULES
Write a lecture to teach your classmates about the topic that is described momentarily.
Your lecture be such that the class will understand the notions that are involved and be
able to use these notions.
The written lecture should be your own work. Collaborations with others are not
allowed. However, you are free to consult experts and any sort of reference material
when preparing your lecture if you indicate all such consultations and reference
material using footnotes or at the end of your written lecture.
The topic given below is from Pressleys book and you can quote freely from
Pressleys book if you properly attribute your quotes. Even so, your paper should be
more than just a repeat or paraphrase of Pressleys discussion. Keep in mind that you
are trying to teach someone else what is in the book which is not the same as repeating
what the book says.
If you formulate a statement of a lemma or theorem, you should be careful to state
things precisely, correctly and rigorously. It is OK to quote directly from Pressley in
this regard (with proper attribution).
The paper should be on the order of 6 to 8 pages. Clarity of exposition counts far
more than length.
With regards to the style of exposition, remember that you are writing an hours
lecture to your classmates and so you should focus on teaching someone else what is
going on. If your explanation requires line-by-line explicit calculations (if they play a
central role in your presentation), then you might put these in an appendix to your
written lecture (line by line derivations often make for sleep-inducing lectures).
The paper is due in electronic form as a pdf file or a pdf scan of a handwritten
document) by 11:59 pm on Friday, December 9 (2016). Send the project to me at
the address chtaubes@math.harvard.edu. Do not send an MSWord file or TeX file.
Let me know if you are confused or otherwise at a loss during the writing so that I can
help you if needs be
If I find things said in what you write that are unclear or incorrect, or if I find that you
have missed important points, then I will contact you and give you the option of taking
the perhaps less than optimal grade or resubmitting a revised version of your project
for an optimal grade.
THE TOPIC
The goal of your lecture is to explain to the class some of the basics of hyperbolic
geometry. This is the geometry of the y > 0 part of the (x, y) plane (the upper half-plane)
with the Riemannian metric being
g = 12 (dx2 + dy2) ()
y

In particular, your lecture should contain at least the following:

Write down the geodesic equations for the geodesic curves. This is the second order
differential equation that is obeyed (x(t), y(t)) when this curve is a geodesic. A
schematic representation of this equation using the Christoffel symbols is given in
Proposition 9.2.3 but with (x, y) replaced by (u, v). Your equation should have the
form of the equation in Proposition 9.2.3 with the Christoffel symbols that appear
given explicitly as functions of x and y.
Explain why the solutions to the geodesic equations are the vertical lines and the half
circles with center on the x-axis. (I sketched why this is in one of my lectures.)
Give a computation (using the Christoffel symbols) of the Gauss curvature (which is
constant and equal to -1).
State and then explain the proof of Proposition 11.1.3 in the text book which makes the
following two assertions about geodesics in the upper half plane (Proposition 11.3
calls them hyperbolic lines.)
i) There is a unique geodesic through any two distinct points in the upper half plane.
ii) Suppose that is a geodesic in the upper half plane and that p is a point in the
upper half plane that is not on . Then there are infinitely many geodesics through
p that do not intersect .
Explain the significance of Proposition 11.1.3 in the text with regards to Euclids
axioms. (Euclids axioms are discussed in the text book in the first two paragraphs of
Chapter 11.)
State and explain Theorem 11.1.5 of the text which gives a formula for the sum of the
angles of a hyperbolic polygon. You should compare the statement of this theorem to
the corresponding statement for a polygon in Euclidean space.
Most of what you will be writing about is touched on in Chapter 11.1 of the book,
although the discussion there (and its referral to Example 9.3.3) is skimpy with regards to
what you should say to address the first three of the bullet points.
If you want to go further with the discussion of hyperbolic geometry, you can talk
at the end of your lecture about Proposition 11.1.4 in the text. This proposition gives a
formula for the distance as computed by the metric in () between any two points in the
upper half plane. Or, you can talk about what is said up through Proposition 11.2.1 about
isometries of the metric in (). These are the self-diffeomorphisms of the upper half plane
that preserve lengths as measured by this metric.