II.3 Self-intersections 39
Arcs and closed curves. Starting from a single crossing, we can trace the
self-intersection in one or both directions, adding a line segment at a time.
Since we have only finitely many triangles and thus finitely many line segments,
each curve must either close up or end. In the first case we get a closed curve
of almost all double points. Its preimage in K is either a pair of loops or a
single loop that covers the closed curve twice. Such a double covering loop is
necessarily orientation reversing hence M must have been non-orientable. To
construct an example, sweep a line segment along a circle in R3. The line
segment remains normal to the circle but its angle with the symmetry axis of
the circle can change. If we take the angle from 0 to π during a full revolution
then we get the Mo ̈bius strip. If we take it from 0 to π we need a second full 2
revolution before the surface is complete. We thus get a Mo ̈bius strip whose mapping to R3 crosses itself along the center circle, which is covered twice.
We conclude this section with two immersions of the Klein bottle in R3. In
the first and perhaps most commonly known model, the neck of the bottle
extends and bends backward, like a Flamingo, but then continues and passes
through the surface. The closed intersection curve is the common image of
two orientation preserving loops. To construct the second model, we sweep a
pair of line segments along a circle in R3. The two line segments cross each
other orthogonally at their respective midpoints and they are both orthogonal
to the circle. During a full revolution we take the angle one line segment forms
with the symmetry axis from 0 to π. Correspondingly, the angle formed by the
other line segment goes from − π to π . The two line segments thus sweep out 22
two Mo ̈bius strips crossing each other along their center circles. We can now complete the Klein bottle by connecting the two boundary curves by a circular arc, which we again sweep twice around the axis. In other words, we get the Klein bottle by sweeping a figure-8 curve along the circle, rotating it half-way so that after a full revolution the two lobes are exchanged. We now have an immersion in which intersection is a closed curve whose preimage consists of two orientation-reversing loops.