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Möbius Strip Riddle Solved
BigLug writes with news that two experts in non-linear dynamics, Gert van der Heijden and Eugene Starostin of University College London, have developed an algebraic equation that describes the Möbius strip — something that, you may be surprised to learn, had never been done since the form's discovery in 1858. ABC.net.au has an accessible short summary: "What determines the strip's shape is its differing areas of 'energy density,' they say. 'Energy density' means the stored, elastic energy that is contained in the strip as a result of the folding. Places where the strip is most bent have the highest energy density; conversely, places that are flat and unstressed by a fold have the least energy density."
Now if only they could build a little bridge out of matchsticks so those poor ants can get off that damn endless path.
"Here we use the invariant variational bicomplex formalism...." I can comprehend the first four words.
Who the hell talks like that?
Hope is the currency of fools
pessimism and sarcastic remarks will get you nowhere in the scientific community.
Now leave me alone while I figure out how to get to the top of these stupid MC Escher stairs.
Interesting idea, but I'm having trouble seeing both sides of their argument...
Relatively easy, just follow the guy with no face.
To get to the other
Möbius strippers never show you their backsides.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Well, them, and occasionally Star Trek writers.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Sweden just figured out the differential equations governing a noose.
A Nøøse once bit my sister ... No realli!
Can't you just purchase one? I don't think I'm willing to go through all of that for a mobius strip. What's it good for? Representing the concept of infinite? Showing that an object can theoretically exist with only one side? Bleh, useless I say!
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
I made many mobius strips when I was young. It puzzled me where the "other side" went when I taped the two ends together, and *really* frustrated me when, despite *self-evident* demonstrations, "other people" (stubbornly less mathematically-inclined) insisted that there were still two sides!
... the other side ... was there before the taping, *not* there after the taping. Where does it go? Clearly it must go into AN INVISIBLE DIMENSION. Is it a dimension of sound? of sight? of mind? Is it vast as space, timeless as infinity?
It
Is there no human being, anywhere on the earth, tall, emaciated, daring, who will undertake to have his feet taped to his head, and report to us the nature of this invisible dimension? So many questions arise: when held to a mirror, will he see himself? Will he discover other feet-taped people there? Will it dark in the day, light in the night there?
(Continued next issue)
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
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