thethinkingatom

“A 2-in-1 loop”

Have you ever thought of such a loop that requires you to reach the same point after travelling twice?

Well, here is the mobius strip. In mathematics, a Möbius strip, Möbius band, or Möbius loop is a surface that can be formed by attaching the ends of a strip of paper together with a half-twist. As a mathematical object, it was discovered by Johann Benedict Listing and August Ferdinand Möbius in 1858, but it had already appeared in Roman mosaics from the third century CE.

The Möbius strip is a non-orientable surface, meaning that within it, it cannot consistently be distinguished clockwise from counterclockwise turns. Every non-orientable surface contains a Möbius strip.

The many applications of Möbius strips include mechanical belts that wear evenly on both sides, dual-track roller coasters whose carriages alternate between the two tracks, and world maps printed so that antipodes(2 points on a sphere like Earth that are diametrically opposite each other) appear opposite each other. They also appear in molecules and devices with novel electrical and electromechanical properties

Click the following link to see how an object travels around a mobius strip –

It can be seen that the ball takes two rotations to travel around the strip. This is due to its non- orientability. This means that the strip does not have a consistent clockwise or counter clockwise direction. Instead it can be traversed in two directions, one of which is the reverse of the other.

A mobius strip can be created by taking a strip of paper, holding it on one end, twisting it 180 degrees and sticking both ends together. If you trace your hand along the strip, it will take two round to reach the same point. It should look like an infinity loop when held exactly sideways like shown below.

A mobius strip model