一個立體幾何的問題

In geometry, the defect of a vertex of a polyhedron is the amount by which the sum of the angles of the faces at the vertex falls short of a full circle.

Descartes' theorem on the "total defect" of a polyhedron states that if the polyhedron is homeomorphic to a sphere (i.e. topologically equivalent to a sphere, so that it may be deformed into a sphere by stretching without tearing), the "total defect", i.e. the sum of the defects of all of the vertices, is two full circles (or 720° or 4π radians). The polyhedron need not be convex.

A generalization says the number of circles in the total defect equals the Euler characteristic of the polyhedron. This is a special case of the Gauss–Bonnet theorem which relates the integral of the Gaussian curvature to the Euler characteristic. Here the Gaussian curvature is concentrated at the vertices: on the faces and edges the Gaussian curvature is zero and the Gaussian curvature at a vertex is equal to the defect there.

If one bends and deforms the surface M, its Euler characteristic, being a topological invariant, will not change, while the curvatures at some points will. The theorem states, somewhat surprisingly, that the total integral of all curvatures will remain the same, no matter how the deforming is done. So for instance if you have a sphere with a "dent", then its total curvature is 4π (the Euler characteristic of a sphere being 2), no matter how big or deep the dent.