Math 121A               Differential Geometry               Winter 2008

Updated 3/13/08

Normal sections notebook

Midterm solution suggestions. Note that most of the problems can be approached various ways; these are just the approaches that came to mind first.

 

INSTRUCTOR

Instructor: Debra Lewis
Office: 359B Baskin Engineering
Phone: 459-2718
E-mail: lewis at ucsc dot edu (checked more often than voicemail or gmail) and/or DebraKLewis at gmail dot com
 

TIMES AND PLACES
Lecture: MWF 2:00-3:10, 302 JBE
Office hours: Tuesday 6:00-7:00, location 360 JBE, Thursday 2:00-3:10 359B JBE new location!)
Course web page: http://people.ucsc.edu/~lewis/Math121 (here)
 

TEXT

Elementary Differential Geometry, Second Edition, by Barrett O'Neill
 

VERY TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

Monday Wednesday Friday
January 9: tangent vectors, directional derivatives January 11: curves in three-space
January 14: 1-forms January 16: differential forms January 18: mappings
January 21: HOLIDAY January 23: dot product, curves January 25: Frenet formulas
January 28: arbitrary-speed curves January 30: covariant derivatives February 1: frame fields
February 4: connection forms February 6: structural equations February 8: isometries
February 11: orientation and Euclidean geometry February 13: MIDTERM February 15: congruence of curves
February 18: HOLIDAY February 20: surfaces February 22: computations on surfaces
February 25: functions on surfaces February 27: differential forms February 29: differential forms cont.
March 3: mappings of surfaces March 5: the shape operator March 7: normal curvature
March 10: Gaussian curvature March 13: the fundamental equations March 15: isometries revisited
March 17: Gauss's theorema egregium

 

GRADING

Your overall score in the course will be the best of three weighted averages of your homework, midterm, and final exam scores. Your lowest homework score will be dropped. Your participation in the problem-solving sessions will influence your evaluation/grade, but there won't be a numerical score assigned to that component of your performance, or to your final project if you choose to do one.

 
HOMEWORK POLICIES

There will be weekly homework assignments, given in class on Fridays and due at the beginning of class the following Friday. Homework assignments will be posted online, but assignments are not 'locked in' until they've been given in lecture. Please let me know ASAP if you notice a discrepancy between an online assignment and the one given in class.
Most exercises will be from the text, but some may be taken from other sources (these will be provided as hard copies and online).

Late homework will be discounted and, at the discretion of the grader and/or the instructor, may not be accepted.

Your homework should be neatly written and well-organized, with the pages securely fastened together and your name on every page. Many of the exercises involve several nontrivial steps; make it clear to your readers (and yourself!) what it is you're doing at each step.

Clearly number the exercises and try to submit them in numerical order; if any problems are out of sequence, indicate that at the beginning of the assignment. (You don't need to solve them in order, just submit them in order.) The grader should not have to hunt through several pages to find a particular problem.

Computer difficulties do not justify late or incomplete assignments.