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Minerva Torus
When the Mathematics Department was preparing its documentation for our
departmental external review in the winter of 2000, they asked me to come
up with a cover illustration for the report. The result was the Minerva
Torus shown here, based on the idea originally used in
Nott Torus, but this time using the
College seal wrapped around a torus. In this case, however, the mapping of
the image onto the torus has changed. Here, we use a conformal mapping (a
mapping with a special property that helps to preserve the shape of the
seal), so that there is less distortion of the image as is passes through
the hole of the torus. Note how in Nott Torus the image of the
building is stretched vertically as it passes through the center of the
torus, while in Minerva Torus the seal gets smaller buts stays
basically the same shape.
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