Scroll down to the discussion of the main features of the Cayley surface. |
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The figure shows part of the Cayley surface. It is a surface of degree 3, with 4 singular points. These singular points are often called nodes. Near each singular point, the surface is closely approximated by a quadric cone. There are 9 lines on the Cayley surface. Six of them join pairs of nodes. The lines are not shown in this picture. To see a picture that includes the lines, and for discussion of the lines, please click on the Introduction link at the left. The Cayley surface is the dual variety of the Steiner surface. This means that the points of the Cayley surface correspond bijectively to the tangent planes of the Steiner surface (except that the correspondence is not bijective along finitely many subvarieties). For a discussion of specific features of the duality correspondence, please click on the Duality link at the left. |
The Java files used in this page were downloaded from the
Geometry Center webpage.
I generated the geometric data for this figure in March 2009.
Updates completed on May 18, 2011.
Prof. Joel Roberts
School of Mathematics
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
USA
Office: 351 Vincent Hall
Phone: (612) 625-1076
Dept. FAX: (612) 626-2017
e-mail: roberts@math.umn.edu
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http://www.math.umn.edu/~roberts