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December 8, 2005
Entertainment for Nerds
This is sure to amuse the most bookish among you for at least 7 minutes and 23 seconds. It's called the "Mobius Strip" (or band, or loop), it's named after August Ferdinand Möbius, an astronomer and mathematician but you'd swear it is a magic trick. I first heard about it reading "A Whack on the Side of the Head" by Roger von Oech last weekend, but didn't immediately grasp the concept from his description. A quick Google search turned up two very helpful links, along with more information than I really needed, but came in handy when dazzling my co-workers tonight. You can read those links for yourself here, and here.
Basically, you take a strip of paper (for my first attempt, I cut a gas station receipt in half), tape the two ends together, but before taping them twist one end so the back of it is taped to the back of the other end. What you have now is a loop with only one surface and one edge. You can prove this by taking a marker and drawing a line around it, you will go all the way around and return to your starting point. The fun really starts when you cut the loop into half. Instead of winding up with two loops, you still have one loop, but it's twice as big. Then cut the loop into half again. I'm not going to tell you what happens, you'll have to find out yourself.
The most fun comes in demonstrating it to other people. I didn't realize that until one of the guys leaned back against his chair and said "Now you've got my interest". Of course, they quickly lost interest when I suggested a practical use for it within the shop!
Posted by Anna at December 8, 2005 2:39 AM