The Joy of Mathematics

So I'm reading this little book, The Joy of Mathematics, that I bought on a whim who knows how long ago. I have many unread and interesting looking books that fall into that category. Someday I will have time to read them all. But I digress.

Now this is probably old hat to everyone on the planet but me, but I thought it was cool and it's my blog so I'm sharing! The one thing that I've been most fascinated by so far in the book is the Moebius strip. It is a one sided object. You start out with a long strip of paper. If you tape the ends together you end up with just a ring. But if you first twist one end, and then tape it together, you have a Moebius strip. This strip of paper, which only a moment ago had two unique sides, now is an object with only one side. If you don't believe it, start drawing a line down the middle of it. Eventually you end up back where you started, without ever lifting the pen off the paper, and you have traversed the entire length of it. In the words of Neo: "Whoa."

Then again, perhaps I'm just easily amused. :)