Spans of continua related to indented circles
by
Thelma West
University of Louisiana at Lafayette

It has been asked whether or not when you have a simple closed curve S in the plane and you have a simple closed curve T contained in the bounded component of the plane minus S, then is the span of T less than the span of S? We show that if S is an indented circle, a particular type of simple closed curve, and T is any continuum which is contained in the bounded component of the plane minus S, then each of the spans of T is less than the corresponding span of S.

Date received: February 7, 2001