Research Group:
Speaker:
Alfio Borzi
Institution:
Graz University
Schedule:
Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 08:00 to 09:00
Location:
SISSA - Main Building - ground floor - room D
Abstract:
It will be shown that, given a planar polygon ormechanical linkage, considerable geometric informationon the variety of its configurations can be obtainedusing the algebraic formulae for topologicalinvariants of quadratic mappings. As an illustration,the complete list of possible topological types ofplanar pentagons will be obtained. Similar resultswill be presented for spatial quadrangles and certainmechanical linkages. An application to investigationof the stereoisomery phenomenon for certain organicmolecules will be also outlined.