Comment by ChrisGreenHeur

3 days ago

A manifold is a surface that you can put a cd shaped object on in any place on the surface, you can change the radius of the cd but it has to have some radius above 0.

Nicely done!

Initially I recoiled at the thought of the stiffness of the CD, but of course your absolutely right, at least for 2d manifolds.

> you can put a cd shaped object on

You're thinking of open sets.

  • In particular, consider two intersecting planes. You can put all the discs you like on that surface, but it's not a manifold because on the line of intersection it's not locally R2.