In 3 dimensions, one can bend a flat sheet of paper into a cylinder without stretching the paper, but this cylinder cannot be bent into a torus without stretching the paper (unless some regularity and differentiability conditions are given up, see below).
Automorphisms of T are easily constructed from automorphisms of the lattice Zn, which are classified by invertible integral matrices of size n with an integral inverse; these are just the integral matrices with determinant ±1. Making them act on Rn in the usual way, one has the typical toral automorphism on the quotient. The fundamental group of an n-torus is a free abelian group of rank n. The k-th homology group of an n-torus is a free abelian group of rank n choose k. It follows that the Euler characteristic of the n-torus is 0 for all n. The cohomology ring H•(Tn, Z) can be identified with the exterior algebra over the Z-module Zn whose generators are the duals of the n nontrivial cycles. Configuration space
As the n-torus is the n-fold product of the circle, the n-torus is the configuration space of n ordered, not necessarily distinct points on the circle. Symbolically, Tn = (S1)n. The configuration space of unordered, not necessarily distinct points is accordingly the orbifold Tn/Sn, which is the quotient of the torus by the symmetric group on n letters (by permuting the coordinates). For n = 2, the quotient is the Möbius strip, the edge corresponding to the orbifold points where the two coordinates coincide.