On Aug. 24, Richard Schwartz, professor of mathematics, published a preprint paper to arXiv.org that proved a conjecture that has stumped mathematicians for nearly 50 years: What is the shortest strip ...

Imagine holding a strip of paper. You give it a half-twist and then tape its ends together. The shape you’re now holding is the ticket to a world where surfaces have only one side and boundaries blur ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American If you hang around with mathematicians or go ...

Math isn’t just about numbers—it’s also about patterns and shapes. One of my favorite shapes is the Möbius strip, a mind-warping surface with only one side. It’s simple to make one: Just take a strip ...

A Möbius strip can irritate our perception. At first sight, the strip has two sides and two edges just like a normal ring made from a strip of paper, for example. If you follow one side or one edge ...

A Moebius strip created from laser light opens up new possibilities for material processing and for micro- and nanotechnology. Physics sometimes borders on light art. An international team headed by ...