{"id":45389,"date":"2018-09-24T13:31:45","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T20:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=45389"},"modified":"2018-09-24T13:35:27","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T20:35:27","slug":"the-weird-world-of-one-sided-objects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/the-weird-world-of-one-sided-objects\/","title":{"rendered":"The weird world of one-sided objects"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

You have most likely encountered one-sided objects hundreds of times in your daily life \u2013 like the\u00a0universal symbol<\/a>\u00a0for recycling, found printed on the backs of aluminum cans and plastic bottles.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0mathematical object<\/a>\u00a0is called a Mobius strip. It has fascinated environmentalists, artists, engineers, mathematicians and many others ever since its discovery in 1858 by August M\u00f6bius, a German mathematician who died 150 years ago, on Sept. 26, 1868.<\/p>\n

M\u00f6bius<\/a>\u00a0discovered the one-sided strip in 1858 while serving as the chair of astronomy and higher mechanics at the University of Leipzig. (Another mathematician named Listing actually described it a few months earlier, but did not publish his work until 1861.) M\u00f6bius seems to have encountered the M\u00f6bius strip while working on the geometric theory of polyhedra, solid figures composed of vertices, edges and flat faces.<\/p>\n