Mathematics Commons^™

Quandles That Are Knot Quandles, Jason Haskell

All NMU Master's Theses

There are many papers that introduce the relationship between knots and quandles which are written tersely and focus mainly on applications or implications. Here, we will take time to explain in depth how to derive quandles from oriented knots. Starting with an rigorous introduction to what a knot is and what a quandle is, we will also define the Fundamental Quandle of a knot and the relationship between colorings of a knot and the homomorphisms from an arbitrary quandle to a Fundamental Quandle. Then using this foundation, we will examine two sets of knots that produce quandles that contain subquandles …

Algebraic Invariants Of Knot Diagrams On Surfaces, Ryan Martinez

HMC Senior Theses

In this thesis we first give an introduction to knots, knot diagrams, and algebraic structures defined on them accessible to anyone with knowledge of very basic abstract algebra and topology. Of particular interest in this thesis is the quandle which "colors" knot diagrams. Usually, quandles are only used to color knot diagrams in the plane or on a sphere, so this thesis extends quandles to knot diagrams on any surface and begins to classify the fundamental quandles of knot diagrams on the torus.

This thesis also breifly looks into Niebrzydowski Tribrackets which are a different algebraic structure which, in future …