ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Plumbing (mathematics)

Plumbing in mathematics is not about pipes and water like in real life. In math, plumbing refers to a branch called topology, which studies how different shapes can be connected or linked together.

Imagine you have some objects like shapes or figures, such as a square, a triangle, or a circle. In plumbing, we want to understand how these objects can be connected together by bending and stretching them without tearing or gluing them.

Think of a piece of string. You can bend it, twist it, and tie knots with it. In plumbing, we do something similar with shapes. We can bend them and stretch them as much as we want, but we can't make any cuts or glue them together.

Now, let's play with these shapes a bit. For example, if you take a piece of paper with a hole in it and twist it around, you can connect the two ends of the paper to make a donut shape. This is called a torus in plumbing.

Another example is the Möbius strip. Take a long strip of paper and give it a half twist while connecting the ends. Now, if you draw a line along the strip without lifting your pencil, you will eventually end up where you started, but on the other side of the strip. This is a very special shape in plumbing because it only has one side.

So, plumbing in math is all about exploring different shapes and understanding how they can be connected or linked together without cutting or gluing. It helps mathematicians understand the properties of shapes and how they relate to each other.