Discussion on knots-tangles-dna

[marg...@math.utah.edu]

Charlotte,

Great job at summarizing the article. One thing I am a little
confused about is: why are those two definitions of a "rational
tangle" the same?

I am having a little trouble understanding the underlying biology
here. Do we know any biologists at the U we can ask?

Can we understand Theorems 1 and 2 of the paper (see the Files section
of this web page)? For starters, can we understand the easy
direction? As a first step, can we explain the vector notation for
rational tangles? Good references might be the book by Adams and the
one by Cromwell. We also need good descriptions of the addition and
closure procedures.

Dan

[marg...@math.utah.edu]

Hi Charlotte,

I still do not think I understand this vector notation for tangles.
Maybe you can explain with some more examples?

Also, I am having a little troupble understanding what is going on in
the picture at the bottom. Can you explain, and maybe scan at a
higher resolution?

Any thoughts on how to explain the straightforward directions of the
theorems? What about the other directions?

Dan