High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Homeomorphisms are the isomorphisms in the category of topological spaces that is, they are the mappings which preserve all the topological properties of a given space. Two spaces with a homeomorphism between them are called homeomorphic, and from a topological viewpoint they are the same. Roughly speaking, a topological space is a geometric object, and the homeomorphism is a continuous stretching and bending of the object into a new shape. Thus, a square and a circle are homeomorphic to each other, but a sphere and a doughnut are not. An often-repeated joke is that topologists can't tell the coffee cup from which they are drinking from the doughnut they are eating, since a sufficiently pliable doughnut could be reshaped to the form of a coffee cup by creating a dimple and progressively enlarging it, while shrinking the hole into a handle.