Quantum chemistry: "okay, so here are Bohr's postulates; here's why they suck; here are better ones . . . " and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, you suddenly get Schroedinger's equation. >_<
@BalarkaSen I went back to the first chapter of Aluffi. it apparently has pushouts and pullbacks. an exercise in ch. 2 asks to find those in $\sf Ab$. interesting.
@Remember A category consists of a class of objects, a class of morphisms between objects, such that you can "compose" morphisms and that "composition" has desirable properties like associativity and having an identity.
@Rememberme It's the highest level of abstraction you can get. For example, people try to do prove more general things in groups by looking at proofs in arbitrary categories.
@BalarkaSen okay, done the torus thing. it's basic calculus-y parametrization, I realised after a while.
$$\begin{align*}x &= (R + r \cos \varphi) \cos \vartheta\\ y &= (R + r \cos \varphi) \sin \vartheta\\ z &= r\sin\varphi\end{align*}$$ where of course $0\leq \varphi, \vartheta\leq 2\pi$.