Good books for learning topology

Ed Quanta

How useful is topology for physics? And what are soome good books for learning topology. I find a lot of the definitions in textbooks way too abstract and not giving examples of the topological spaces they are defining. Drop some titles if you have a moment.

matt grime

For modern theoretical physics it appears indispensible. Look at Jon Baez's website to see some stuff that might interest you.

www.math.ucr.edu

thence faculty > baez > home page and browse the back issues of this week's finds etc.

if you want to throw yourself in at the deep end then I can suggest other stuff but i think it would be totally inappropriate at this stage.

Triss

You could take a look at Sidney Morris' "Topology without tears", you can get it for free at his website http://uob-community.ballarat.edu.au...s/topology.htm.

NateTG

Munkres is good. It was quite pricy, but well worth the cost, when I bought it. You might try a local university library to look at topolgy books.

cogito²

^^^

munkres is very clear. other books such as royden are good but only if you do the exercises (he gives you very little...you basically learn everything from the problems). like nate said, i would recommend you go to the library and get a few different top books. the more different sources the easier it is to understand.