Möbius strip: Encyclopedia II - Möbius strip - Art and technology

Möbius strip - Art and technology

The Möbius strip has provided inspiration both for sculptures and for graphical art. M. C. Escher is one of the artists who was especially fond of it and based several of his lithographs on this mathematical object. One famous one, Möbius Strip II, features ants crawling around the surface of a Möbius strip.

It is also a recurrent feature in science fiction stories, such as Arthur C. Clarke's The Wall of Darkness. Science fiction stories sometimes suggest that our universe might be some kind of generalised Möbius strip. In the short story "A Subway Named Möbius", by A.J. Deutsch, the Boston subway authority builds a new line; the system becomes so tangled that it turns into a Möbius strip, and trains start to disappear.

A popular limerick is often associated with this design which reads,

There have been technical applications; giant Möbius strips have been used as conveyor belts that last longer because the entire surface area of the belt gets the same amount of wear, and as continuous-loop recording tapes (to double the playing time). Möbius strips are common in the manufacture of fabric computer printer and typewriter ribbons, it allows the ribbon to be twice as wide as the printhead yet both half-edges are used evenly.

A device called a Möbius resistor is an electronic circuit element which has the property of cancelling its own inductive reactance. Nikola Tesla patented similar technology in the early 1900s, US#512,340 "Coil for Electro Magnets" was intended for use with his system of global transmission of electricity without wires.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Art and technology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki