Geometry – Compact Manifolds and Orientability

geometrymanifolds

I've a doubt about compact manifolds and orientability.

I know that Compact Manifolds in $\mathbb{R^3}$ are orientable.

My questions is:

The statement above is valid only for compact manifolds without boundary (in this case, closed manifolds)?

I'm asking this because I'd read that the Möbius-Strip with its boundary is a compact manifold.

Can someone explain me this?

Thanks.

Best Answer

There are two notions here: manifold, and manifold-with-boundary. If you add the boundary circle to a Möbius strip, you get a manifold-with-boundary, which is not a manifold. The statement that all compact manifolds embedded in $\mathbb R^3$ is true. For $0$ and $1$-manifolds, it follows because all $0$ and $1$-manifolds are orientable. For surfaces it follows because any connected compact surface in $\mathbb R^3$ divides $\mathbb R^3$ into two pieces, which takes a little work to prove. (I like Alexander duality as a proof.) Then you can orient the surface by taking an outward-pointing normal vector at each point and using the right-hand rule to orient the tangent-plane at each point.

The statement is false for $\mathbb R^4$. You can embed the projective plane in $\mathbb R^4$.