Expand-contract plasticity on the real line.

The study deals with plastic and non-plastic sub-spaces A of the real-line E with the usual Euclidean metric d. It investigates non-expansive bijections, proves properties of such maps, and demonstrates their relevance by hands of examples. Finally, it is shown that the plasticity property of a sub-space A contains at least two complementary questions, a purely geometric and a topological one. Both contribute essential aspects to the plasticity property and get more critical in higher dimensions and more abstract metric spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]