Talk:Whitehead link

Remove copyedit

Header added. —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 23:42, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a copyedit tag on the article, but it looks pretty good to me, I'm going to remove the tag. EvilPhoenix 19:18, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Two Reidemeister I moves?

Header added. —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 23:42, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Although it's topologically irrelevant, the image looks to me as if there were nearly two Reidemeister I moves applied to the orange loop. Of course the Whitehead link could also be archieved without any Reidemeister moves at all... --Rubik's Cube (talk) 00:15, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Do you have a question? --C S (talk) 10:00, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

"Discovered"

Not sure Whitehead really "discovered" it; rather, he found its connections to deep mathematics... AnonMoos (talk) 19:29, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Unknotting number is 1, not 2

Flip the central crossing Columbus8myhw (talk) 19:59, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

What "minimum possible volume"

One sentence reads as follows:

"The Whitehead link complement is one of two two-cusped hyperbolic manifolds with the minimum possible volume, the other being the complement of the pretzel link with parameters (−2,3,8)."

In order for this to make any sense, it must be explained what "minimum possible volume" means. Minimum among what, exactly?

Minimum among all hyperbolic 3-manifolds? Among all orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds? Among all orientable hyperbolic 3-manifolds that are knot complements? Among link complements? Etc.50.205.142.35 (talk) 15:28, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

metamorphosis

If the figure is manipulated so that the 8-strand becomes a circle, what happens to the other? I did some doodling, and it appears that the other becomes an 8; hence, the two strands are equivalent. If this is confirmed by Reliable Sources it ought to be in the article.

Is there a neat form in which the two strands have the same shape? --Tamfang (talk) 17:27, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

According to Cundy and Rollett's "Mathematical Models" (2nd. edition, 1961), p. 59: "It may not be immediately obvious without a model that the configuration is symmetrical in the two loops". -- AnonMoos (talk) 04:59, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Symmetric view

There's a symmetric view (under 180° rotation around an axis in the plane of the view) in Fig.22 of arXiv:2001.01472v1, given as a visual proof of the statement that it is symmetric in this way. I've included a redrawn version of the image here. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:44, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Beautiful, thanks! —Tamfang (talk) 18:07, 26 December 2021 (UTC)