The icon on this button is a picture of the Klein Bottle. We chose this icon to represent this project for two reasons.

• Most containers, whether spheres or cylinders or boxes, have an inside and an outside but the Klein Bottle has only one side. We use ordinary containers to separate the contents from the outside. The Klein bottle is a perfect "container" for each course in the Connected Curriculum because we believe that individual courses should not and cannot be separated from the rest of the curriculum and from rest of the world. We believe that by learning mathematics together with the physical, life, and social sciences, and the visual arts and music, we will learn more about each subject individually and about our world as a whole. Because the Klein bottle has only one side it is a perfect symbol of the indivisibility of the curriculum, of the academy, and of the world.

• The Klein bottle cannot be seen in three dimensions. It only exists in a four dimensional world. This project, too, is four dimensional. The fourth dimension -- time -- is essential. We expect that this project will always be changing as our world changes and as new authors, both faculty and students, add their own material.

The Klein bottle is named after Felix Klein. See the brief biography at the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive.