French bowline French bowline Some consider that a French bowline is the same as a Portuguese bowline, i.e. a bowline with two loops that can be used as a bosun's chair. A different knot is however also known as a French bowline. This form of bowline is similar to a standard bowline but there are several loops so that there is less likelihood of damage to a delicate object secured by the bowline. As with a standard bowline, the knot cannot tighten. Pressure is distributed over a wider area than in the case of a standard bowline. The main advantage of this
Arf invariant of a knot if they are related by a finite sequence of pass-moves, which are illustrated below: (no figure right now) Every knot is pass-equivalent to either the unknot or the trefoil; these two knots are not pass-equivalent and additionally, the right- and left-handed trefoils are pass-equivalent. Now we can define the Arf invariant of a knot to be 0 if it is pass-equivalent to the unknot, or 1 if it is pass-equivalent to the trefoil. This definition is equivalent to the one above. Vaughan Jones showed that the Arf invariant can be obtained by taking the partition function of a signed planar